


Baby, I Wanna Touch You, I Wanna Tear Into Your Soul

by oneforyourfire



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Enemies to Lovers, Kidnapping, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-05
Updated: 2017-09-05
Packaged: 2018-12-24 07:28:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12007947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oneforyourfire/pseuds/oneforyourfire
Summary: But the Oh, they’d never themselves be tamed, be broken. The Oh, they tame. They break.





	Baby, I Wanna Touch You, I Wanna Tear Into Your Soul

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Shayshay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shayshay/gifts).



> i tweaked the prompt quite a bit to make it something i was more comfortable writing, but i hope this is still to your liking. if there are still elements of stolkholm syndrome or abuse, it's entirely my own fault, and i'm sorry
> 
> additional warnings: aforementioned potential stolkholm syndrome, kidnapping, blood and hutning mentions, messy ~boys will be boys alpha posturing, self-lubrication, knotting, suho being criminally patient and encouraging with overgrown manchild oh sehun

The Omega, he’s small, Sehun notes, when Jongin tugs him forward, short, slight, swimming in his clothing, completely _dwarfed_ by Jongin. His hair is clipped short, city-style, sneakers brand new, stark white, also city-style. Weak. Unassuming. Average. Negligible. 

When Chanyeol had said he was a shadow leader of sorts for their pack, respected, beloved, powerful, when he’d said that maybe he could be their bargaining chip, their edge, their hope, Sehun had expected someone _bigger_ honestly, broader, taller, more threatening, more formidable, someone befitting his reputation, _definitely_ not someone so small and slight, someone swimming in dark-washed denim, loose cotton, shoes that look like they’re at the very two sizes too big. 

He’s a small, a negligible thing, even if his jaw is squared, his eyes hard and glittering with anger, even if his fists are clenched as he jerks out of the touch that Jongin lands on his shoulder. An Omega. Thin wrists, small frame, thin waist, slim arms, legs, cute, pretty, too, an Omega as he should be. 

Sehun squares his shoulders, sets his chin, tall, broad, imposing, notes smugly the way that the Omega swallows, tenses before blinking up at him, notes smugly the way the other pack members—drawn by the dying rumble of Jongin's pick up truck—murmur in quiet approval. 

The Omega squares his shoulder, sets his chin, too, speaks, annoyed, rough. 

“Did you hurt Jongdae? Lu Han?”

“The Betas?”

“Yes, the betas,” he sighs, _exasperated_. "The ones that came to pick me up from the airport. When you—” He exhales shakily, and the way his shoulders curl and shiver beneath his shirt make him look even smaller. “Did you—did you hurt them?”

“No.” And he loses some of the tension, shoulders relaxing, hands opening, lips parting with a relieved exhale, and Sehun _hates_ that. 

“You're our captive,” he announces, motioning to the other pack members. “A hostage of the Oh Pack. I’m your new Alpha. My name is Sehun.” 

The Omega’s throat bobs with a swallow, and his eyes flicker around the fire pit, back to the truck, settle finally on Sehun. His jaw is clenched, dark eyes narrowed. 

"I don't know what you want," he says finally, voice unnervingly steady, even though Sehun can still see how badly his hands are trembling. "But my suitcase, it has food. Money. Some souvenirs." A pause. A grimace. "My camera, it's worth a lot, too. Even my clothes...I'd just need my passport and ID, but you could even take my credit c— “

"You’re a captive," Sehun repeats. "You're here to stay.” 

“You mean to take me,” he says.

_Mean to knot me_ , he means, and Sehun jerks, sudden revulsion twisting in his stomach. 

“We aren’t savages. That isn’t—No, Yifan. Yifan, he took—” 

And the Omega swallows, blinks. Sehun can see it, sudden and bright, the way that understanding blooms in his eyes. It makes his eyes round, bright. His eyebrows pinch. His lips purse. It makes him look even more small, cute, pretty, even more an _Omega_. And oh, if Sehun had found him like that, just like that, small, helpless, even dressed in city clothes with city hair, city clothes, city tones, under different circumstances and asking for help, Sehun would have accepted him. Always, always accepts. 

But he’s a bargaining chip, an edge, finally hope, a means towards an end. Their hostage. 

“Oh,” he says, then inhales, exhales, bites his lower lip nearly white. "My suitcase," he says. “My clothes. My camera. They’re the only things of value I have. The only things I can offer you. The only thing you’ll get. Take them, and let me go home."

“We aren’t savages,” Sehun repeats, insistent. And unmated wolves, they’re said to be. Savage, careless, reckless when unchecked, when stressed—eking by on lands that are too small, on less food, less crops, less animals, less and less and less hopes for survival. Males wolves especially. Like those violent, lonely, bull elephants on the African savannah, lacking proper socialization, the community training, goring rhinos in cruel, aggressive confusion. But Sehun, he’s been checking them, doing his best by them. But finally, there is hope. Finally a bargaining chip. Alternately, an enemy. “In spite of what you might have heard.” 

“But you’re desperate,” he counters, and irritation bristles in the nape of Sehun’s neck, tastes bitter and sharp on the tip of his tongue. “Minhyunggie—he said…Said that your pack is…I know you mean to trade.” His teeth scrape against his bottom lip. “Or you mean to send a message. It won’t work. They won’t,” he insists. “Take my suitcase, my clothes, my camera. They’re the only things you’ll get. Not even for me. Not even for Jongdae. Yifan, he won’t. Minhyunggie, he isn’t coming back.” 

_They need him_ , Chanyeol had insisted. _Yifan, he practically co-rules with him. Joonmyun sits at all the pack meetings. He’s Head Omega. And he’s vulnerable, and they aren’t expecting it. And we’d finally, finally have a chance to prosper, Alpha._

Sehun, he needs to hold onto at least the possibility of it. 

"We eat dinner at sundown,” Sehun announces. “I’ll see to it that you get more than your fair share of meat. And we’ll give you some support beams and straw to make your own lodging.”

The Omega’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “You have your own huts, too? Even for unbonded wolves?”

Sehun nods curtly, and the Omega's lips pop open.

“And you all sleep alone?” he ventures again.

“Yes. Jooheon is Head Omega. He’ll explain the rest of our rules and customs. You can make yourself comfortable while we contact your Alpha to see just how valuable you are.”

 

They’ve lost most of their potters, weavers, smiths, Jooheon explains to him, in a soft, too-apologetic rush, so they all have to share work. Pottery, weaving, welding. Cooking, too. Washing, too. Fishing. Tending to smaller crops, too. 

Hunting, the Omegas asks, and Sehun snorts at the same time that Jooheon shakes his head, lowers his voice to explain that that’s Alpha work. 

The Omega looks vaguely off-put, his eyebrow cocking, but he’s complacent enough, following where he is led. To the food pit. To the bath house. Turning to face the fields. 

Jooheon, he explains the rules, schedules, in and outs to him to him, too—bathing times, weekly trips to the den house, to the city stores, offers whittled wooden polls, straw, string for him to build his own lodging for the night, tips forward to whisper something that Sehun doesn’t catch but that has the Omega nodding slowly, thoughtfully again.

 

At the campfire that night, he sits painfully straight, small and imposing, conspicuously foreign as he watches the flames contemplatively, arms resting on his knees, his eyes dark and skin pale and lips ruddy and pursed. His eyebrow cocks when Sehun offers his plate, but he bows in gratitude. His fingers tremble around his chopsticks, the movement harsh in the shadows cast by the fire's flickering flames.

There’s a tattoo on his wrist, hexagonal, intricate, the design stark against his pale skin, the paler blue of his veins just beneath. The shadows lick across it, and Sehun is transfixed, abruptly overcome with an intrusive though. Minhyung, his thin pale wrist, marred like this, stamped _wrong_ like this, trembling as foreign hands wipe away at ink, blood. 

Sehun shakes the thought away, jabs his spoon into his bowl, scoops more rice into his mouth. 

The Omega folds his knees to his chest, and he’s even smaller, paradoxically more imposing. Conspicuous. Foreign. 

 

There is no moon that night. And Sehun lingers, hidden behind the beam of his house as he watches the Omega struggle with the roof of his own, too short to tie the beam as tightly as needed, too short to stack the straw properly. Sighing, cursing, periodically pausing to bang his head against the structure. 

Sehun tires of watching him after a while, crawls back into his tent. But he can hear him even after he’s stripped out of his clothes, strewn himself across his furs. 

Pounding, cursing, sighing, struggling. 

He hears another voice after a while, too quiet to place. Then only silence, intercut with the disembodied hoots of owls, the unidentified scraping of nocturnal animals on the prowl. 

 

His father had explained to him once, how humans had first tamed wolves, how they'd lured them with the promise of food, warmth, whittled them away into docile, cowed shadows of themselves. How even wild, spirited, feral things can be trained to trust, to love, to protect, can learn to put their _master's_ best interests above their own. Make it so they  
never misses the moon's call, never ache for the sweetness of freedom, never even think of leaving.

But the Oh, they’d never themselves be tamed, be broken. The moon was already a cruel enough, demanding enough mistress. 

The Oh, they tame. They break. 

 

In the early dawn, Sehun watches the way the Omega tends to his tent, shakes away the dirt from his furs, picks at the loose leaves on his straw roof, watches the way his fingers tense around the poles afterwards as he stares out into the horizon. His shoes are scuffed with more dirt now, tied, the laces double-knotted. His gaze on the horizon is much too calculating. 

It’s a journey. A long one, a difficult one, but one that Minhyung—pup though he was—managed, all on his own.

And Sehun, he's poised to pounce. 

But the Omega doesn’t run, instead stays unnervingly still, clenching and unclenhing his fists rhythmically as the sun paints the sky in feathery shades of orange, pink, purple. He turns abruptly, and their eyes lock, the Omega’s eyes liquid black, bottomless. The Omega holds his gaze for three beats too long before dropping it. He rolls his shoulders forward, small, deferential. Clenches and unclenches. 

 

Sehun's traps have caught two rabbits, and Sehun gives the Omega the larger, arranges it with the fattest pinecones he can find. A circle. An apology of sorts, an offering. 

The Omega picks the scrapes between his chopsticks. There’s the shadow of facial hair on his upper lip, dark, dark circles in the hollows beneath his eyes. His body is folded uncomfortable, small, foreign, imposing.

 

Sehun, Jongin, Chanyeol, Hyunwoo make their rounds around their territory North to East. Tree by tree. While Moonkyu, Youngho, Wonshik, Taeyong cover South to West. Round and round. 

There are no stray wolves to be found. No game animals either. No howls from the others to indicate that they have found any. 

They meet by the fields, join the Betas in tending the fields, their irrigation canals, repairing a hoe that Hoseok —in his enthusiasm—had broken. 

 

It isn’t his week, but Hyunwoo borrows the truck, drives out to the store, disappears into the Omega’s tent with a small plastic bag.

Toiletries, Hyunwoo informs him when Sehun asks, one of those little bags they sell at convenience stores. A toothbrush, a small tube of toothpaste, facewash, body wash, shampoo, conditioner. A razor. A three pack of underwear. Two pack of socks. Necessities. 

It was ￦12,000 total. But if it's really a problem, Hyunwoo can foot the cost. Sehun shakes his head. 

 

Moonkyu returns from the pack house, makes their announcement. Their bargain. Their threat. Their chance.

And thus, they wait. 

 

The Omega, he’s smaller than the other wolves in Sehun’s pack, swimming even in Minhyung’s old clothing. Still painfully out of place, a conspicuous placeholder, but it falls into a pattern as they wait. 

The Omega's a decent weaver, Jooheon divulges. A decent cook, too, Sehun finds. Funny, friendly, Chanyeol supplies needlessly. Patient, Baekhyun says. 

And it sells well, his work. His quilts, his necklaces, bracelets, beadwork, Taeyong informs him. The tourists at the market oohing and aahing over his creations, even though he's a city boy, presumed to be useless at such things.

And he’d managed to catch a good half dozen fish on his own, too. Knew how to debone and prepare them. 

Temporary as he is, he’s useful at least, good for the pack overall. 

The Omega works well, does his share, keeps quiet, only raises his eyebrow or wrinkles his nose in displeasure or twists his lips in a grimace but doesn’t talk back or revolt or challenge his position as a hostage, as a kept thing, and Sehun continues to wait out the days, anticipate Yifan’s response. Minhyung’s return. The hazy promise of a dowry of sorts, too. Lands, too. More hope, too. 

But Sehun, he still resents the quiet displeasure, the way his soft, pretty face twists with it whenever he finds something presumedly wrong in their practices—their hunting parties, crops, bathing habits, the fact they only make weekly trips to the pack house for access to electricity, internet, mail services. He resents how it makes irritation simmer in his veins, press down hard on his neck, resents how it makes it makes purposeless, confused, ugly, awful, awful aggression curl tight around his heart. 

He hates it. Wants to hurt him for it. 

The judgement, he finds there. From an Omega. Not even a _real_ leader. 

And certainly not a real pack member. 

 

"A city boy," Taeyong sneers, disdainfully, folding his shopping list into fourths, then eighths before shoving it into the pocket of his jeans. He’d requested batteries, deodorant, paper, pens. Film. His camera back, too.

A city boy, an outsider, a means towards an end. 

 

But it isn’t a shared sentiment. 

Enamored, Chanyeol sits beside the Omega, asks to be told more about the city—his life out there, what it’s like to be surrounded by buildings so tall they scrape the sky, with artificial lights so bright they outshine the stars—folding his legs to his chest, resting his chin on his knees, loud, animated, humming in agreement, gasping in surprise, wheezing in laughter at all the right spots. Changkyun, Jihoon, Baekhyun, Jaehyun join, too.

Rapt, riveted, revolting. 

A recurring affair. 

 

And they wait. 

 

The days have been growing steadily longer, even more steadily hotter. 

It’s that thick, oppressive kind of heat he can feel pooling on his skin, itching on his throat and between his shoulder blades as it trickles down his spine.

It has them wearing less, working less, too, spending more time near the water, or naked in their huts. 

It has Sehun's patience wearing thin, too.

 

“I’m not used to…eating like this,” the Omega confesses a week in, poking listlessly at his meat—deer, a blessing—chopsticks tapping against the polished wood. Loud, discordant. "Eating food that I didn't catch, I mean." And Sehun glances up from his food in time to see Chanyeol nods understandingly. He’d also, also come to Sehun later, an Alpha from a splintered pack, had also bumbled through adjusting to pack life. Sehun tilts minutely, spoon tapping against his own bowl—distracted, obvious—as he listens in. 

“Not used to feeling…worthless,” the Omega adds after a beat. “I mean, Omega work is—it isn’t useless.” His nose crinkles, lips twist in thought, plush, red. His chopsticks clink against the bowl, wood on wood, a restless tattoo. Sehun watches his hands. His fingers are chapped, his knuckles pink&mdahslaundry, he’d heard him complain to Minhyuk earlier, the bar soap too harsh on his skin. The tattoo on his wrist lengthens and shortens with the movement. "This just isn't how I'm used to contributing. This isn’t what I’m used to doing, and it makes me feel useless.” 

"How do you divide labor in your pack?"

"Ability—we trained in everything as pups. Only specialized when we reached maturity.”

“Same as mine,” Chanyeol prattles on. “I was going to be a blacksmith, I think. Before…Before I needed to find a new pack.“ It’s rare for his smile to die, rare for that old sadness to bloom in his eyes. Rare and fleeting. Chanyeol forcing a smile, asking the Omega what he’d been, whether he’d been better at it than at beading because he’s a natural a beading. 

“I was a hunter. I was good at it. Better than this. That’s why I feel useless.” His voice rises slightly, eyes catching Sehun’s. “This pack, it’s not good at using members as it should. That’s why it’s falling apart.” 

Sehun recognizes the bait, rises to it. 

"I don't understand why you're so insistent in denying your own weaknesses and performing tasks you aren’t suited for.” His voice is crueler, words sharper, louder than he intends them to be. “Don’t understand why your pack gives _Omegas_ illusions of grandeur and importance. There’s a natural order to things, and you’re weaker for not recognizing that.”

The Omega’s hands start to shake, and he sets down his bowl. 

“We might be weaker for our customs,” he says, voice soft but dangerous, hands tense not from fear, Sehun realizes, but rage. “But we still manage to control the lands you want. We still manage to thrive while you struggle to even survive. And we were enough to charm away Minhyung, a _pup_ , who was willing to risk it all to get away from you and your natural order.”

Anger and indignation burn through Sehun’s limbs, prickle in the nape of his neck. Blood rushes in his ears. He rises sharply, knocks over his bowl, his spoon, his chopsticks, fists curling, heartbeat racing. A hand curls around his shoulder. 

“You aren’t a savage,” the Omega spits, a taunt, a challenge, rising, too. Beneath his borrowed clothing, his small, pale chest heaves. 

The hand tightens, arresting, not soothing, and Sehun shoves it away, watches, still panting in anger as the Omega stomps off into his tent. 

Their cast iron pot of rice bubbles and overflows. 

 

The words, his words, they echo in Sehun’s mind that night, haunting, taunting, tormenting as he tosses and turns on the hard, hard ground. 

And oh, the awful, awful darkness pulsates through his veins, scrapes along his skin. Mixes with despair and desperation and his aching, aching desire to be enough to keep his pack together. 

 

Taemin, he returns the next afternoon with no news. Good or bad. In limbo, they wait, adjust, manage. 

 

The next week, Sehun calls the whole pack to the fields. 

The sun beats on his skin, heavy and hot, sweat trickles down his spine, his muscles ache with the exertion, and it makes him feel powerful, useful, most useful. Beside him, Moonkyu, flushed and breathless, motions with his chin. The Omega is pressing his face into his shoulder, sneezing soundly, then shaking his head and going back to tugging at weeds.

Sneezing, tugging, sneezing, tugging, over and over again. 

Sehun sighs, yanks even harder. The force has soil flying, stinging and sharp as it rains in his eyes. 

Moonkyu yelps. 

The Omega sneezes even harder, nearly tips forward with the force, and Hyunwoo wraps an arm around his waist to keep him upright. 

Sehun tugs even harder. 

 

They stack their wheelbarrows high, overflowing. And oh, he struggles with that, too. 

"The Omega," Sehun sighs, purposefully loud, mocking, as hefts the basketful of weeds onto his shoulder. 

“We have several,” Hoseok counters, nose wrinkling. “Alpha,” he adds after a beat.

 

They wade in the river by the fields after, and Sehun splays open in the water, watches the clouds flit across the sky, hopes. 

 

Sehun, as Alpha, gets to shower first. 

The water is so cool against his skin, he shivers, bare feet clapping against the stone floor as he squirms, reaches blindly for their lone wash cloth, bottle of body wash.

It’s jumbo size as expected, but the scent this time is chemical, fruity. The bottle says “For Sensitive Skin.” 

“The Omega,” he sighs, scrubbing his skin hard, fast, watching it pink beneath the bubbles.

He scrubs his scalp hard with their jumbo sized bottle of shampoo, too, combs conditioner through his hair.

Smelling more and more like him, bristling at the realization, he watches the water drain by his bare feet, sighs. 

 

“He’s waiting it out, I think," Chanyeol decides, elbowing Sehun as they trod along the river. “Acting like he has better things to do, can’t even _deign_ us with a response. But of course, he needs him, Sehun. I made sure of it. He's practically co-leader. Joonmyun speaks more than him sometimes at the meetings.”

 

In the early, still thankfully cool kiss of dawn, Sehun stretches, twists as he looks out into the horizon, strains until it aches, cracks. 

Hakyeon before he’d left—left him, too—he used to joke that Sehun’s shoulders broadened out so much, so fast just to bear the weight of his responsiblities. It’s why his voice had dropped so soon, too, why his limbs had grown so long, why he’d hardened with the burden of leadership, authority because there’s nothing like tragedy to make your body stumble into adulthood prematurely, nothing like stress to turn carbon into diamonds.

Hakyeon had laughed every time he'd said it, pinching his cheek immediately afterwards, but Sehun isn't entirely sure it was ever really a joke.

And his shoulders, they ache even now, even though he’s stopped growing, and leadership feels like a millstone around his neck. Like the debilitating weight of the world on a body not nearly broad enough, even after all these years to bear the crippling weight, and the unease is creeping, slithering through his veins, settling heavy and hot and familiar on the nape of his neck.

He breathes consciously through it. 

Tonight is a full moon, and Sehun can feel it thrumming through his veins already, a restless siren's song. The wild, untamed wolf clawing beneath his skin.

As the first rays of dawn lick across the sky, the Omega hesitates near Sehun’s tent. His hair is disheveled, the hollows beneath his eyes dark, and he asks if they’re running all together or if it’s by rank, blinks when Sehun says it doesn’t matter, Sehun doesn’t run with the pack during moons. 

There’s judgement there again, but Sehun doesn’t let it sting, ignores the bright flare of indignation. Sehun breathes once, twice, watches the way the Omega shifts uncomfortably on his feet.

"How do you—is it just not a pack tradition?”

“Not anymore.” 

The Omega's lips, eyebrow quirk.

“It helps my pack feel connected. Especially non-mated wolves. It makes our wolves trust each other, I think. Makes us trust our leader.” His fingers twist in his jeans, and even if his gaze his steady, voice sure, Sehun knows. He's nervous. “Can I have the name of the other Omegas at least? Can I run with them?”

And the way he raises his palms in supplication—even if Sehun suspects it's an affectation—it makes something prickle in the nape of his neck. Pity, maybe. Or guilt. 

“We can—” Sehun exhales. “We can run together.”

The Omega’s smile, it’s sudden, bright, blinding as the sun. 

 

And for the first time since he was a pup, for the first time since he’s allowed himself to stiffen and lengthen with the duty of leadership, for the first time since he stopped letting himself be a pup, Sehun runs with his pack. And half-formed, sharp, cutting memories, the sharp, cutting memories of happier, purer, better, better times tear at him as they claw to the surface. 

But oh, it’s like breathing, finally, finally breathing. 

And oh, it's also a balm, soothes the restless tattoo of his racing heartbeat, the helpless itch beneath his skin, fur, the restless, reckless ache in jaw, his claws, his fangs. 

And it feels right, excruciatingly so, even if Sehun keeps running too fast or too slow, stumbling over rocks, stray tree branches, bumping into Youngho, Taemin, Hyunwoo, Jaehyun, the Omega over and over and over again. 

The Omega nips at his shoulder after the fourth time, as they round their fifth or sixth lap. He shoves into him, howls in delight when Sehun gives chase, slows and then quickens, wriggles out of his grasp any time Sehun even hints at catching him.

He nips at Sehun’s ear, too, and they tumble onto the ground together, wrestling.

He’s stronger than he looks, stronger than he should be, stronger than Sehun, and Sehun gives it his all, kicking, wriggling, biting, too, but the Omega pins him eventually, presses his snout into Sehun’s throat. A kill bite. A win bite. And in front of Sehun's entire pack. He preens about it, too, ears flat, golden eyes dancing because he’s bested him—his New Alpha. Mortified, Sehun shoves as hard as he can, and the Omega staggers back with a yelp, shifting as he crashes against the dirty ground. 

But, he’s preening still—more visibly now—naked and smug as he saunters to the river’s edge.

He’d won, and nothing Sehun does can take that away from him. 

Anger sears through him, and Sehun wrenches a fistful or dirt from the ground and tosses it at a tree. Kicks rocks for good measure, ignores the itch of his pack's eyes on his skin.

The adrenaline, the moon, it has them all hard even after they’ve shifted, stumbled towards their water.

And enraptured, briefly, briefly enrapture, Sehun keeps his eyes on the Omega’s throat as he washes. Transfixed, he watches the way a fat drop of sweat glides down his flushed skin, dances down the contours of his slight, finely-wrought chest, the spell only broken when Moonkyu laughs, splashes him hard with water. 

Sehun sputters, splashes back, then shoves him into the water, holding him down until Moonkyu claws at his feet and garbles about being the very best hunter and thus indispensable, please, please, okay.

 

And still, they wait. 

 

Two weeks later, at dinner, the Omega’s picking listlessly at his rice, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. And it's different, his hesitance, jarring, makes him look small, makes him look helpless, makes Sehun’s chest twist with the desire to _help_ —wrong as it is. 

The Omega’s mouth opens and closes several times.

“I need,” he starts, stops, swallows. “I know you sleep alone,” he says. 

“We do.”

The wolves, gathering plates, stop. 

“Right.” He hunches his shoulder, curls his hands into fists. “In my pack, we don’t do that. Not unless we’re mated, in which case, we sleep with our mate. I’m not used to sleeping alone. If there was—if I could just share a tent with someone. Not even all the time if that’s too much. But it’s—this is the longest I’ve gone without a bed partner. And it—it’s good for pack bonding, you know. It could really help you with...” 

He trails off, but Sehun bristles. It’s presumptuous, and Sehun doesn’t care if he was right about the Moon Run, doesn’t care because the Omega is still just an Omega, still not a leader, much less a pack member, still a hostage, still a kept thing that has no real say in how things are run. 

Sehun is sure to pinch his face in distaste. 

“Just one,” the Omega continues. “I wanted to ask if I could with just one. That’s all I would need. Not even the whole pack.“

“Your leader is Chinese, that’s why.”

“Yifan?”

“They, in China, they all sleep together in a big tent.”

In his periphery, Jongin shifts uncomfortably. Hoseok kicks at a stone. 

The Omega blinks. “I’ve visited other packs, and it’s the same case,” he says. “It isn’t just in China. It’s here, too, and it’s the way I was raised before Yifan was even leader, when our Alpha was Korean, too.” 

“It could be nice,” Jongin says. Baekhyun, Jooheon, Wonshik nod minutely, shift uncomfortably, kick at stones, too.   
Sehun bites the inside of his cheek, swallows once before motioning for Jongin to continue. 

“I think it’s good for bonding, too,” Jongin says. “I think...I mean, I think it soothes the aggression. Makes our wolves trust each other.”

His voice pitches at the end like a question, like an insecurity. A formality, Sehun knows, softening a disagreement.

“When we have our omega huts during heats,” Wonshik adds, softly. “It makes us feel closer, I think. It’s nice to be touched and held, I think.” 

“When we sent hunting parties to our borders,” Hyunwoo adds softly. “When he had our first missions, it helpled, too.”

“The old Alpha,” Jongin adds. “I mean, I mean before.” Soft, still. Deferential, still. And fuck, how long has he wanted this? How long has he been scared to say it?

And yes, before and with others. 

"Right now, too, then," he decides.

 

The next night, after dinner, they set up the tent. 

The moon is a sharp slash of silver in the sky, the stars clouded over. Chanyeol overestimates how much space they’ll need, Jihoon underestimates how much straw bedding. In the end, it’s a tight fit with much too much empty, bare ground.

Sehun is deciding still whether he should join or if his endorsement is really enough when Jongin beckons him forward. Sehun stumbles as he tugs off his shoes, socks, leaves them stacked by the entrance, stumbles again towards the bedding, collapsing behind Jongin, arm curling loosely. The Omega, he shuffles to be behind Sehun, tries to curl his arm around him, and Sehun stiffens. 

“You can’t just—I’m an Alpha,” and the Omega exhales in frustration before forcing him down, pressing his nose into the nape of Sehun’s neck. Long and lingering, distracting as he winds around him persistent and vice-tight. And Sehun wonders—deliriously— if they were wolves, if Joonmyun would lick him, too. Bite him on the nape of his neck, hold him until he relaxed, treating him like the pup he isn’t, the pup he hasn’t been for a long, long time. Wonders, alarmed, too, why his wolf isn’t snarling, rising to the surface, reminding this _Omega_ , this weak, soft, insolent thing, that he has no _right_. 

The Omega presses his fingers, small and strong into Sehun’s chest, kneading until he finally, finally relaxes—begrudgingly.

“There,” he says, and Sehun quells a shudder, hands fisting into the cool straw ground. Jongin takes those fisted hands and winds them around his waist instead, soothes his thumb along Sehun’s knuckles. 

Implicit approval, a reminder. 

Jongin, he knows best. He’s known longest. 

Sehun exhales in defeat, and the Omega’s lips curl into a smile against his skin. “It soothes the wolf, you know, being held, being cared for especially when you’re like this, close to the Earth.”

Sehun hums dismissively. 

“I know you’re an Alpha,” the Omega breathes into his scalp. “I know that you want to be strong. Want to not be held. But it isn’t about that. Your wolf doesn’t care about that.” A pause. A hum. “Tao,” and the Omega’s voice turns achingly fond. “Tao is this size, you know. Maybe even bigger. He feels bigger, I guess. It isn’t about size or rank. It’s about trust.”

“You’re my enemy,” Sehun says, and the Omega laughs. It’s breathy, soft, mirthless.

“You’re the one that’s keeping me here. So you might as well trust me as you wait for things to sort themselves out. You’ve already made it quite clear you don’t consider me a threat. So just let me hold you, that’s all I want.” 

Jongin makes a soft sound at his front, and Sehun melts in increments, slow, slow, slow. 

And it's quiet, the silence stretching, stretching, the Omega's breathing so even that Sehun jerks when he speaks, though his voice is soft. "I just can't believe you don't—it hurts sometimes to not be touched," he whispers. "Feels like my skin doesn't fit on my bones right. Feels like my heart is being ripped open.”

Sehun doesn't answer, doesn't even acknowledge that he's spoken, and the Omega sighs.

"Maybe your pack really is stronger," he breathes, nosing in that sensitive place where Sehun's neck meets his hairline, his breath hot and shuddery as his lips curl pensively. "Or maybe you just are, Alpha.”

 

He takes extra care to extricate himself the next morning, spends two beats watching the Omega’s face to ensure that he hasn’t awoken him. The darkness, the disdain, they’re slower-moving this morning, an afterthought almost, taking several beats to catch up with him, twisting tight in his gut when they do, then tighter, tighter. Sehun watches the way the early morning dawn dances across his furrowed eyebrows, pursed lips, deliberating, deciding whether the Omega’s a wolf to tame, or a rhino to gore, musing over which method of breaking Sehun will use, then whether it’s even worth it when this Omega is merely a placeholder, a vanguard for better things to come. 

 

Sehun’s body feels warm, soft, heart light in spite of himself, though. At breakfast, lunch, as they scout their territory. 

“Good right?” Jongin laughs, elbowing him as they travel to the furtherest reaches of their land, where the asphalt starts, home to cars, sign posts, civilization, those that let themselves be tamed, let themselves be gored, as far out of the forest as Sehun ever wanders. 

Sehun nods, begrudging but sincere. 

 

And that, too, becomes routine. A biweekly affair. 

Sehun protests again the next week, is hugged into submission once more. Then once more, but is ignored. The third time, Chanyeol bounds over with intent, shameless, touchy, winding and persistent, laughing when the Omega nuzzles into his throat and says he’s a better partner than he’s become accustomed to. 

Indignation, anger, disdain, the darkness and something small and ugly and helpless twist through Sehun, and he curls into Kihyun’s side. 

 

And oh, the problem with being a leader—de facto—is the crippling self doubt that often paralyzes him, and the proble with the Omegas is he reminds Sehun of just how precairous his leadership is, how weak and helpless he is, but at least for now, the Omega is weaker, even more helpless, an Omega, his to tame, to tear open if he so chooses. 

And while he waits, he’ll choose. 

 

“This has gone on long enough,” Taeyong parrots for him a week later. “Return him to me, Sehun.”

“This is why Minhyung ran away,” Wonshik rasps out. “You rule like a pup. Return him to me.”

“They won’t for me,” the Omega murmurs to Baekhyun when the latter pouts and laments at just the thought of losing him. “Not for a pup. Definitely not for ancestral lands. I’m here indefinitely.” 

 

And he’s right, they won’t. Or they haven’t. Not yet.

 

The Omega is much less hesitant, apologetic at the next Moon Run. Naked already, standing at the edge of the forest, bouncing on the heels of his bare feet. He bends abruptly in half, then twists back, stretching. 

There’s more time like this to idle, to stare, to drink in the curve of his ass, the sleek definition of his stomach, his back, the slight flare of his hips, thighs, all soft, smooth, silky, pale, pale skin. An Omega, pretty and pliant like one. Enticing like one, too. 

Sehun finds that he resents that, too. 

 

They start the run as soon as they sun sets. 

Adrenaline zips through his veins as Sehun pushes his body faster, faster faster, crashes over rocks, through trees, past his other pack members. Past the Omega.

They crash into each other again, and he can feel the helpless wag of the Omega's tail against his back legs, see the bright moonlight dancing across his golden eyes, midnight fur even as he whimpers, collapses in defeat. Sehun pins him, noses along his shoulder, bites, and the Omega goes limp, all the strong lean muscles melting into a pliant puddle. Too easy. Bares his throat. Too easy, too. 

The Omega, he’s let him win. And his tongue is lolling out his mouth, playful, happy, tail thumping against the ground, golden eyes dancing with amusement. 

Resentment bubbles in Sehun’s throat, and he butts him harder than necessary, blood singing with a twisted sense of justice when he yelps, jerks back.

And it isn't fair for him to preen again even when he hasn't won. Even if he _had_ lost on purpose.

And really, he had deserved it.

But the guilt, it’s acrid and residual, sticks to the back of his throat, roils in the pit of his stomach.

And the next morning, he apologizes again with pinecones. Arranged in a three isosceles triangles this time. Along with two wild flowers he found growing from an old tree.

He finds one outside his own tent that night, squeezes it tight enough for part of it to crack before taking it into his home. 

 

The Omega insists on wrapping his arms around Sehun, and Sehun breathes out a whispered apology into their entwined fingers. 

“I saw your pinecones,” he whispers back. “Last week. After the first night, too. I accept.” 

Sehun nods, shudders as the Omega’s fingers meander aimlessly up his arms. The muscles beneath his skin tense and release. Elegant and delicate and fragile and so warm. 

“It’s just—please just don’t pity me,” Sehun says. “Don’t treat me like a pup.” He buries his nose into the crook of his own arm, hating the petulance in his own voice. Breathing consciously, speaking intentionally slow, deep to mask it as he continues. “I’m an Alpha. I’m a leader.” 

“I won’t,” the Omega says. “But you also shouldn’t—” He shifts, and his small shoulders feel somehow so broad, pressed against Sehun’s back like that, the beat of his heart steadying, grounding. “Don’t treat me like a pup either. Just because I”m an Omega. Just because I’m not a leader. Just because you managed to convince Jongin of all people to steal me away.”

Sehun agrees with a hum, and his lips curl against Sehun’s skin. His breathing is warm. 

It’s easy to melt into the steady heat of it, easy to fall asleep like that. 

 

Sehun is extra careful once more, extricating himself slowly, slowly, careful not to jostle him over much. Sleepy still, in that milky place between slumber and reality still, he reaches out to smooth the wrinkle between Joonmyun’s eyebrows, then the one of his nose, pulling away only when Joonmyun stirs. 

Sehun feels full to bursting with warmth. 

 

As he clears the table after breakfast, he overhears Joonmyun talk about the sky, how it’s that perfect shade of summer pink still—how he’s itching to capture it. Loud and obvious. 

But Sehun returns his luggage that night. And he looks near tears as he receives it, cradles it close like a child. 

Sehun nods dismissively as Joonmyun thanks him. Off-kilter, an itch crawling beneath his skin, pressure squeezing tight around he nape of his neck. 

Generous, grateful, Joonmyun calls for the other members to come quickly so he can share the wealth. His French spoils.

Chocolate, it's a luxury seldom indulged. And Parisan, decadent, it’s finer than any that they've ever had.

Sehun lets Taeyong, Youngho, Jaehyun, Jihoon, the maknaes eat first, then the Omegas, then the rest of the pack, doesn’t step forward to accept any until the others have had their fill.

The chocolate has melted by then, and the foil wrinkles as he licks out what he can. It smears sticky and wet across his fingers, his face, that aching sort of decadent sweet he hasn't had in years.

And Joonmyun laughs as he watches him. It’s bright, beautiful, sweet, makes Sehun's skin heat with embarrassment, heart bubble with contentment. He smiles back, mouths sloppily at the the chocolate that has melted into the creases between his fingers and along the jut of his wrists. 

Joonmyun picks through the rest of his luggage, sleeves pushed up to his elbows. Laughing along as Baekhyun jokes about all the trouble he’d love to get into if he was allowed to wander the world. 

But Joonmyun’s smile dies, slow and somehow still sweet, a flower claimed gradually by winter.

He's holding a bottle of wine, cradling it close to his chest, not at all like a gift to be shared. 

“This... it's for Yifan," he says. He sets it back down, pulls out a baby blue box, a beret, a little candle holder shaped like the Eiffel tower. “For Jongdae, Lu Han, Minseok.” A box of cookies. “These are for the pack.” He gestures to Sehun, to the discarded foil wrappers. “Those were for my pack, too."

He stands abruptly, fiddles with the zipper on his luggage, rubs restless fingers over the pockets, then just as abruptly drags the luggage away, clumsy but intent, disappearing into his hut.

Jooheon, silent and pensive, stands, too, balls up the others' paper, foil, throws them away in their 50 liter trash bags. The others, compelled into action, help.

Joonmyun doesn’t emerge for dinner that night.

Sehun’s fingers itch to find more pinecones, but he abstains. Isn’t ready to apologize when he know he can’t alter his behavior. 

 

They eat cookies—madeleines, Joonmyun calls them—for breakfast the next morning, gather the crumpled plastic wrappers before dispersing for their morning duties. 

Joonmyun’s smile, it touches his eyes again. 

But the guilt, it doesn’t quiet dissipate. 

Even as he watches Joonmyun tilt his head up, camera strapped around his neck, lips pursed in concentration as he attempts to capture the sky. 

 

Jooheon makes an exception for Joonmyun, drives out to the country store, stays the hour necessary for Joonmyun’s photos to be developed, flushes darkly and tugs at his earlobe when Joonmyun thanks him over and over and over again for helping him. 

 

Beside him, as the others prepare food, set out their bowls, Joonmyun struggles and curses softly through his needlework, eyebrows pinched, eyes narrowed in concentration, fingers painfully, painfully slow and careful. 

He sighs loudly, tears out the seams, starts again. “I wasn’t quite made for this,” he decides, pouting, turning over the fabric, starting again. “I can’t ever get them straight, you know. I used to get scolded so much as a pup that Joohyun—she, in my old pack, she would tear this out and do it for me. She felt bad for me.”

Joonmyun stretches out his legs, swivels his ankles until they pop. 

“Have you ever tried?”

Sehun hasn’t—hasn’t needed to—but he does now, curling forward to get a better look, sticking his tongue out of his mouth in concentration. 

He tries his best. 

Joonmyun’s face pinches unattractively when he sees Sehun’s best. 

“Joohyun would also tear them out for you,” Joonmyun decides, lilting and teasing and warm as he tears the stitches out, starts again. Sehun, transfixed, watches his hands move. The tattoo on his arm glitters is the kiss of moonlight. 

 

There's dirt under his fingernails now, callouses on his palms whenever his hand brushes—absently—against Sehun’s skin. 

And there are frays now in his jeans, too, spots on his shirts that no amount of furied scrubbing is able to clean. And his hair, dark, thick, has started falling in his eyes whenever he tips forward. Joonmyun, he looks more and more pack as the days bleed into each other. More and more Sehun's pack.

Breaking, breaking, broken in.

Taming, taming, tamed.

But it doesn’t feel like breaking, taming any longer. Doesn’t feel foreign. Doesn’t feel awkward. Doesn’t feel strained. 

Joonmyun's presence, it’s become mundane. 

The weight of his eyes on Sehun’s face during communal times, the timbre of his voice, the ring of his laugh, his sleepy shuffles in the morning, sleepier touches during pack bonding, the faint whisper of chemical fruitiness, the shampoo, soap, lotion he’d special requested. Lingering. Bleeding into Sehun’s own clothing. 

 

And oh, his hands are nimble, more than decent though Joonmyun protests the assessment, his contribution more than negligible, Joonmyun overall much more useful than he should be. Feels increasingly much more important and necessary than he should. 

And they still lack an answer. 

 

The next week, Joonmyun shows him his pictures. 

Female wolves, pups, wrinkly-faced seniors. An entire community. Beautiful and full of hope and _thriving_. 

Joonmyun’s smile turns wistful as he thumbs through the shots, tells Sehun names, occupations, ages, anecdotes.

And then, oh Minhyung, his arms around a smaller man, their faces both dimpled with laughter. If you didn't know, Sehun thinks, they'd look like brothers.

“Minhyunggie," Joonmyun breathes, and Sehun’s heart twists with longing. "He’s started school,” Joonmyun says. "He’s behind, they said. There are some gaps in his schooling, but he’s bright. He wants to be a doctor. Minseok, his adoptive brother, he’s a doctor.” 

"Minhyung, he'll be of age soon," Sehun says, hating how shaky his voice is. “He's doing well? Growing?"

Joonmyun nods. "He eats so much, much more than he's able to catch on his own. He’s lucky he’s so cute, and that Minseok is so helplessly endeared. Minhyung’s got friends already, already eying girls. Will probably be mated soon.” 

Sehun’s eyes prickle with emotion, and he coughs hard to dislodge the lump in his throat. 

"You're all unmated," Joonmyun ventures. “Found each other and stayed together for protection."

Joonmyun takes his silence as implicit confirmation, takes it for what it is.

“They leave when they mate?” 

Hakyeon, Sanghyuk, Yerim, Sojung, Seungyoon, Hyungwon, Taehyun, Minho. They all leave when they find better. Leave when they realize that their love can blossom better elsewhere. The lump in his throat expands, nearly choking him, and he blinks rapidly to will away the sharp, sharp sting in his eyes, his nose. Sehun holds very still, but Joonmyun guesses correctly again, hums thoughtfully. In his periphery, Sehun can see the way he strokes his chin thoughtfully, the way his leg rears back before kicking forward over and over again. 

"Will you leave when you mate, too? Start your own splinter group family, too?"

"This is all I have,” Sehun says, garbled but sure, as sure as he can manage. Then “Leaders don’t leave. Ever. They die leaders."

"And they do that alone?" Joonmyun guesses. 

Sehun doesn't nod, but he suspects again that Joonmyun has understood.

“You really are much stronger than I,” he breathes after a beat. "Much stronger than any pack would ever ask their leader to be.”

Sehun swallows hard again, breathes consciously past the squeezing in his chest, motions with his thumb at Joonmyun’s pictures. 

Joonmyun, understanding again, thumbs his way through more shots. 

Cafes he’d visited with his friends. The cherry blossom festival. The playground on his pack’s land. The Seoul skyline. 

Joonmyun’s thumb drags absently over the sharp, harsh lines of a tall, tall building. It's flanked by perfectly trimmed trees, sidewalks, haloed in the gold of fading sunlight. Much harsher, sharper lines than those found in nature, severe and imposing and unnatural and _wrong_. Not a building as they should have it. Not as real wolves should be. 

“This is my office building,” he says. "My office is near west, so the light blinds me all throughout my morning." He laughs. "It keeps me awake at least.” 

“You had a job out there?” he asks, and Joonmyun nods. The contemplative smile on his face dies slowly, bleeding by increments into a frown. It’s less sweet this time, makes guilt twist in Sehun’s chest. His eyes squint, shoulders hunch forward. And Sehun feels the sudden, overwhelming urge to smooth the wrinkle between his brows. 

“I had a family, too,” he says. 

“Chanyeol, he’s the one that…that found out about you, the one that told me about how you’d be—And he never said. You’re—you have a—"

“Mate? No. But my pack is my family.” Hi neck lolls back, and there’s no puckered scar on the base of his the throat. The skin is pale and smooth and delicate—unmarred. “My community is my family. I miss my family.” 

“You don’t live in the community all the time, though?” Sehun asks. 

“No, we do, but it’s less...natural. We have electricity, mail services, internet all the time. Alcohol. Books. More…connections. We go to public schools, too, you know. I have a degree in finance. Have—had a job.”

“Why did you need them then, the lands? If it’s just…just for tradition’s sake. If they’re just ancestral.”

Joonmyun’s shoulders stiffen just the slightest against his. 

“There are families. Pups. We have houses there. Playgrounds. Parks. They've been ours since the beginning. Just as these lands have been yours for generations. You have enough, you just don’t use it as you should. Don’t use things as you should. Don't know how and are too proud to admit it. You can’t just steal land in anticipation of what you’ll need but don’t even have. How will you be any better suited to control more?

Indignation crawls like bile up his throat, but he swallows it, picks at a loose thread in his worn, faded jeans instead. The denim is stiff against his palm, chafing. And his body is stiff, too, chafing, overcome with a maelstrom of warring, illogical, overwhelming feelings. The want to reason. The want to hurt. 

“More pictures,” Sehun manages. 

Joonmyun once more complies, explaining how the world is too big, how there is too much to see, too much to experience, not enough of Joonmyun to have it all, but how he wants to gather up as many memories while he still can. 

"I’ve never left the forest,” Sehun confesses. "I saw no need. I have everything I need here. Everything I love here. Can have my fill of existing only here and trying to do my best by my pack here.”

Joonmyun hums, turns over the pictures in his hands once, twice, drags his fingertips absently over the paper sleeve, tracing over the embossed _Kodak_ on the front.

“Paris, it isn’t my favorite,” he says. “I still think that’s Thailand. Or maybe Hong Kong. I don’t have my computer or internet, so Paris is all I have.” He smiles ruefully. “But it's nice to look at, nice to explore.”

He lays them on Sehun’s lap, lets him thumb through them. A stout, wrinkled woman bent over her brightly colored stall. A silhouetted couple holding hands beneath their umbrellas. The rain speckled across a stained glass window. The glitter of hazy city lights across narrow alleys. The haunting moon glowing behind a foggy skies. Paper lamps like stars, luminous and bright and beautiful, casting rainbow shadows across cobbled stones. 

It’s beautiful. 

“Will you do that again, when you leave? Explore more? Take more pictures?”

Joonmyun’s laugh is tight, his body suddenly taut.

“I’ve told you they won’t.” He sets his chin before looking up at him, but his hands open in supplication. “They won’t. Not for me. Not for anyone…Minhyung, I know he—I know he was precious to you. He’s precious to us, too. He’s just a pup, and he’s sweet, a good soul, but he really—he ran for a reason, Sehun. He’s happy now. I know you loved him. I know you did your best by him, but he’s happy. Minseok—Minseok he’s the best hyung for him. They aren’t—they aren’t going to give him up for my sake, aren’t going to give up those lands up for my sake either. And even if…a pack without female wolves, without families, it won’t last. You must know that.”

The air feels tight in Sehun’s chest. The prickling in the nape of his neck becomes a dull roar of panic, seizing sharp and cold through his limbs. 

“You’ve isolated yourself,” Joonmyun breathes after a beat. “Don’t go to mating runs, seldom visit the communal house, have stopped sending your pups to school. You’re doing this to yourself. You’re killing your pack.”

“They’ll come back,” Sehun insists shakily, dropping Joonmyun’s pictures, clawing then at the wooden bench beneath him, grounding as he squeezes the material between his clammy, trembling hands. “Yifan will relent, and they’ll come back." 

“You’ve made them need you too much,” Joonmyun continues. “Have been too scared to need anyone yourself, scared to use everyone to their best potential for fear of hurting them, and it’s tearing you apart, Sehun. You’re dying out.” 

“They’ll come back," he insists, hating how shaky his voice sounds, how clearly the hopeless, desperate _lie_ rings through his own shuddery words, how garbled and weak with emotion he sounds. But he just can't— “The old pack members. The families. The female wolves. They’ll come. We’ll come back.” 

_We have a bargaining chip. We have a chance now. We stole you to have a chance. We need a chance_

Joonmyun’s eyebrow doesn’t cock in that infuriating way it always does, but his eyes soften—in sympathy. No, pity. And that’s almost worse.

And Sehun can hardly breathe, somehow manages to speak. “You don’t—your pack wasn’t built from spare parts the way ours was. Your pack didn’t _find_ each other. Didn’t grow together. You don’t—"

Sehun’s hands continues to tighten, tighten, tighten, past the point of discomfort, pain, until he's tearing at the wood on the table, bare, human-handed. He tightens even then until the material cracks, splinters, pierces, tears, tighter, tighter, tighter. He doesn’t know how real community—doesn’t know that this is all Sehun has, all that he needs—doesn’t know, doesn’t know, doesn’t know—

The wood cuts deeper, sharp, hot, but Sehun doesn’t stop until Joonmyun crouches beside him, small fingers closing around his wrists, pulling them gingerly away.

“Where’s your first aid kit?” he asks, calm, calming. 

Sehun motions with his chin, and Joonmyun tears at Sehun’s shirt, fashions a makeshift sling, asks him to squeeze tight to stem the flow of blood.

“It won’t need stitches,” he murmurs as he cleans out the wound. 

Indignant angry petulant tears burn in his eyes, and he tears at the Joonmyun’s shirt, smears it red and tacky as the alcohol stings against his skin. 

"I know it must hurt,” he say softly, soothing one small hand down his arm, and Joonmyun isn't a parent, Sehun isn't a pup, doesn’t need this kind of coddling. But Sehun’s unsure whether Joonmyun's assumption is better or worse than the truth. 

 

He picks at the bandages that night, wills away Joonmyun’s word, haunting and taunting still, made worse by their sympathy, their pity. The darkness presses heavy, heavy, heavy, crushing on his chest. 

 

The next day, after their noontime meal, Chanyeol fetches batteries, film—the wrong kind, jumps back into the truck with a rushed apology and makes Joonmyun write it more legibly for him. Double, triple checks to make sure he’s got it right. 

He also gets the pack popsicles, a luxury, urges them to eat it quickly. The 50 pack was the best bargain he could find, but they’ll be useless if they melt. 

Sehun's fingers, hands, chin, lips are sticky, his belly aching by the time they finish them off. 

Upon Joonmyun’s insistence, they pose for pictures, arms looped around each other, elbows cocked with dramatic peace signs, then arms flexed to show their muscles. 

Joonmyun laughs as his camera shutter clicks, and Sehun laughs, too, not even needing to fake it. 

Warmth blossom in his chest, spread out to suffuse every single trembling, hypersensitive centimeter of his body.

Sehun picks at a loose thread in his bandage as Joonmyun shouts out order for further poses. 

 

He feels pack even though he isn’t. Here only on borrowed time. 

 

And they get confirmation the next morning after Wonshik's visit to the pack house. His face is stern, strong, a warrior's face, but his hands are shaking, his lips too thin, a practiced attempt at hiding his nerves, bracing for conflict—Hakyeon hyung and Sanghyuk have left, Hunters haven’t found any large game for weeks,….Minhyung is missing

Preemptive dread simmers through Sehun's blood as he waits for Wonshik to think consciously through his words. Find the least offensive way to inform him that things aren’t as he wishes they were. That there’s a crisis, and it’s Sehun’s job, as Alpha, to fix it. 

“They responded,” he says, finally, frowning. “Yifan, Joonmyun’s pack. But—they said no.” He pauses. His hands spider down his jeans, and he rubs his thighs once, twice. “Yifan said that Joonmyun wouldn’t need rescuing, that he’ll save himself, and that he isn’t worried. B‐but that he’s tiring of our peacocking. He threatened to call the authorities.”

The news, it deflates his false sense of bravado. _Fuck, how are they supposed to—_

“But you know that, pack authorities—they won’t get involved if we say it’s pack matters, or if Yifan's pack is scared to…Scared that reporting will…” His word taper off in a sigh. And Wonshik looks like an Omega then, or nearly, cowed, small, scared, his big shoulders curling up towards his ears. Sehun, he very often forgets. 

“If we threaten them you mean,” Sehun says. "Threaten to hurt him, you mean.” 

Wonshik nods, frown deepening. 

“I don’t—”

_Want to control him like that, claim I own him like that, make myself truly savage like that_ , not after I’d promised. 

“None of us do,” he says. “Old rules, though. If you argue that he’s your property. That you’re his Alpha and he’s your Omega. He’s already built his house. He’s already run with the pack. If you…make a claim. Or say you intend to." Wonshik tugs, curls his arms around himself." Old rules," he repeats. "Tradition," he adds.

Old rules, old ways, tradition, antiquated and barbaric. The hushed, horrified whispers of it. The violence of razed villages, pups torn apart limb by limb, omegas knotted, marked, by force, raped. Old laws and old ways. Blood and destruction and fear. 

Sehun thinks of how Joonmyun’s fingers had lingered on the shots of his family's home, the tilt of his eyebrows, the curve of his lips then, the way nostalgia glittered in his dark eyes, a brief peek of his life back there, a spotted window of the things he loves, the things Sehun has torn from him. 

Dazed, he nods. 

“Okay,” he says. “Okay, I need time. I just—”

Wonshik nods, too, swallows hesitates. 

“If Yifan, if Yifan decides to respond …” Wonshik starts after a beat. Respond in the old ways, respond in the horrific ways that Alphas used to respond. Bodies torn open, strewn across the forest floor, crops burned. “We don’t stand a chance, Alpha.”

 

During their morning perimeter run the next morning, they find litter from humans—real humans&mdahsdiscarded foil wrappers, aluminum cans, plastic bottles.

And the trees are closing in around him, too small, not nearly enough, and Sehun marks tree by tree, gropes for Jongin as he barks at him to do the same. Jongin squeezes his shoulders instead, rests his chin on the nape of his neck until he stops shaking. 

 

They collect their summer harvest two weeks later. 

Watermelon, peaches, nectarines, strawberries, baskets brimming and overflowing, stray fruits tumbling out as they’re loaded onto the pack’s old truck. They keep only the bruised, the discolored, the ugly fruits for themselves, have their fill even then. 

Filthy, exhausted, sticky, sticky, dried fruit juice caked around their mouths, hands, chests, too, they stumble towards the lake. Sehun collapses completely in the water, only his injured arm raised. He watches as the others splash. 

He wrestles with the others after. Biting and pinching and tossing and pinning until they’re begging for mercy. 

Drip-drying in the fading sunlight, the pack compares muscles then limb length, finally the thickness of their thighs. 

Hoseok, laughing, suggests they compare cocks, too, then suddenly solemn glances at Sehun, frowns, says there’s no point. 

Joonmyun glances in his direction, eyebrow raised, and Sehun cups his hands uselessly at his crotch, stumbles towards a tree to hide. 

“Asses?" Baekhyun suggests. "Fingers. Tongues?”

 

Chanyeol, Hoseok offer to get popsicles again. Joonmyun asks to accompany them, and Sehun doesn't think until afterwards that he should have said “no.” 

Joonmyun, he isn’t nearly broken. Nearly tamed enough to be allowed such a lax leash. 

Joonmyun, though, he comes back. 

They have to eat it all before it melts again, and Sehun stuffs himself with synthetic strawberry, watermelon, pear until his tongue is stained brown, his belly aches. 

 

They gather their trash, bound towards the water again. Sehun listens to the lazy thrum of dragonflies, the white noise of conversation, watches the stars unfurl one by one across the inky endless, endless black sky. 

The moon is bright, nearly full, and it guides them back to their huts. 

It’ll be more backbreaking group work tomorrow, too, tilling the earth and fertilizing their land, tending their canals, preparing for more crops. 

Tomorrow, they'll drip sweat and ache from exertion. Chanyeol, Taeyong, Hyungwoo, Wonshik will drive out to the market and try to haggle their way into having enough funds to feed themselves for the next couple of months. Trying to survive for the next couple of months. 

But for now they rest, laugh. Savor in the fruits of their labor. 

 

“You said, you said that Omegas don’t hunt,” Joonmyun starts the next night around the fire. “That first night, you said that you'd see to it that my rations were good, but you didn’t hunt for them?”

"I use traps,” Sehun replies, purposefully clipped, stiff, not an invitation for further conversation. "It is still food that I caught. It’s still mine to give.” _It still counts as providing for my pack._

“You don’t hunt as a pack, though. Don’t hunt with the pack, I mean?"

Sehun shakes his head. 

“Oh.”

Sehun, he doesn’t owe him an explanation, but he still&mdash.

“Leaders,” he clarifies, “they don’t need to hunt. They only need to lead.”

"How do you train others? Minhyung, he knew how.”

“There are other members to teach them. I don’t need to be the one.” _I don’t want to be one to do it._. 

“Right.” Joonmyun pauses, wrinkles his nose. "My leader, he taught me. We taught each other, really. We were pups. It was when he was still growing into his body. Paws too big, clumsy. I used to be faster than him. Better than him. It made him angry. That was probably my favorite part." 

His smile is rueful, eyelashes dark and glittery with nostalgia.

Sehun doesn’t know how to respond, so he doesn’t, just twists his fingers in his worn jeans, scrapes his healing palm against his the hole near his kneecap. 

"And it it also you bond, you know. Hunting with their leader. With their Alpha. Being a unit and doing it. But you know that,” he guesses. “It’s because you can’t,” he guesses. 

Sehun spares a glance upward, and oh, his eyebrows are furrowing, face twisting with sympathy again, and oh, humiliation bubbles in Sehun's throat. "Because you were young. Because your parents…”

Sehun nods, swallows thickly to dislodge the lump in his throat, shoulders shaking too noticeably beneath his clothing. The memories, he doesn’t need to—the memories, he doesn’t want to—

He hadn’t needed to learn, on the defense always, only as elegant and refined as strictly necessary. And even in the early years, the struggling to go from being a pup to being a leader years, he never quite learned to bear the taste of blood in his mouth, the rush of it either, the struggles, the sounds of a helpless, helplessly animal fighting fruitlessly for its life. Sehun always too squeamish, weak to make the kill. Never ever needed to learn to make that kill. 

"I can show you," he offers. "It's still head Omega duty in my pack.”

Sehun tenses, and Joonmyun notices, apologizes. 

“I just want to feel useful,” he says. “Useful, used in the way I was in the my pack.” 

 

The next night, the hunters, they’ve caught a lynx, a blessing, and Sehun, nauseated as he is, lingers to watch as they take it apart, prepare it for eating. 

Joonmyun joins. 

His fingers are nimble as they pick apart the carcass, captivating, pale, so small, but stained with more and more blood. A hunter. Ruthless and efficient. 

 

“They're smaller than you, right? The ones you train?” Sehun whispers to him that night as they curl into each other beneath their shared tent. 

Joonmyun nods, slow, sleepy. “Pups,” he confirms. “Pubescent. Long, awkward, kinda clumsy. Cute, though.” 

“Never older?”

“You’d be my first." He nuzzles his nose into Sehun’s scalp, hums a laugh as Sehun shudders, then nuzzles further into him, breath warm and wet on his goosebumped skin. 

“Okay,” Sehun says. Then “Please.” 

Joonmyun’s lazy smiles sends even more shivers tingling down his spine. 

“After the Moon Run,” he agrees. “We’ll fix you yet.” 

 

Joonmyun is beside him at the next Moon Run, stretching again, the twilight glowing soft across the contours of his pale, soft body. 

And it’s exhilarating again, perfect again, natural again. 

When Joonmyun and Sehun meet in the middle, clash, Joonmyun gives it his all, relishes in the shiver of strong, trembling muscles beneath his own, the graze of teeth, claws, the race of his own heartbeat. The triump—heady and hot&mashwhen he pins Joonmyun, beats Joonmyun, fair. 

Naked, Joonmyun dips into the rivers, scrubs himself clean, and Sehun is very briefly transfixed with the way the pale moonlight dances across his face, the sharp contours of his small, slight body. Pretty like an Omega. Alluring like one, too. Damning like one, too. Sehun scrubs himself clean, focuses on the white noise of the pack bathing, too, the safety and familiarity of that versus the confusing feelings curling in his body. 

He wrestles with the others, too. 

And it's easier, without the confusion or guilt or cognitive dissonance of forced captivity, the complication of his actions, easier to just let the moment exist, even with the occasional click and flash of Joonmyun’s camera on him. Sehun careless and weightless and free as Taemin bites at his throat, as Hyunwoo shoves at his hind legs, as Baekhyun bites on his shoulder, attempts to roll him onto his back and burrow into his sensitive belly.

 

They have their first lesson the very next night. 

Sehun shudders as Joonmyun smooths his small, steadying hands on Sehun’s hips, adjusting his stance, rubbing absently through his fur, fond, lingering enough to make Sehun’s skin prickle with emotion, his heart stutter with it. His hair stands on end, but Sehun arches in encouragement. And Joonmyun's fingers skip over his shoulders, down his spine.

"I've never trained an adult before," he muses. "Your habits are already well-established, but I think maybe you can adjust. You’re bright. You want to learn."

He scrapes his nails along Sehun's hind legs, hums softly when he shudders. His thumb kneads into the tense, tense muscle there, coaxing him in increments. Sehun whimpers, then howls.

"There's a good boy.”

 

Joonmyun is his first target. Non-moving, with a worse nose, worse ears, explaining how he needs to keep his footfalls light, be hyperaware of the way that the wind is blowing so as to avoid giving himself away. 

Sehun nods dumbly along, tries to heed his words, but even then. 

“I hear you, you know" Joonmyun announces. "To my left.”

Startled, Sehun scrambles to the other side, stumbles over rocks, a tree branch, snaps a twig. 

Joonmyun, shoulders tensing with aborted laughter, coughs. 

“No, to my right.” 

He’s bristling with frustration, but Joonmyun smiles, as if anticipating it when he turns. And somehow, that makes it better, makes it at least okay. 

 

Sehun doesn’t catch him the next night, or the night after. Fails even at sneaking behind him and startling him as Joonmyun wanders into the bath house three evenings later. 

Too loud, he thinks. Too clumsy, too awkward.

 

Learning this skill, after so, so long, it makes him feel young, foolish, clumsy, inelegant, weak…weak as he only had when he’d taken over. His limbs too long, awkward, loud, movements too coarse and unrefined.

Joonmyun, however, is patient, infuriating as it may be. Makes Sehun more painfully aware of how young and inexperienced he really is. How reliant. 

Joonmyun’s fingers wind around his hind legs, shift his stance just minutely. Sehun tenses, and Joonmyun tsks. “You have to be hyperaware of your body, you know. Have to do it so much it’s muscle memory. It has to be natural."

He scrapes his fingernails up Sehun’s spine, against the hair. Sehun’s skin bristles, and he growls, spine arching into the touch, legs spreading. 

“There,” Joonmyun says. “Like that.”

It’s a nonmoving target, a lone, demarcated leave on a tree by the river, Joonmyun honing Sehun’s pouncing skill. It’s childish. It’s something a child could do, something that Sehun at least succeeds at, and Joonmyun squeezes congratulatory at the scruff of his neck. The caress, parent-pup. Alternately, lover to lover. 

A possession, a taming that Sehun hasn’t consented to, but one that he doesn’t protest, his tail wagging helplessly when Joonmyun squeezes harder, murmurs about how much his form is improving. 

 

The pack gathers for their bimoonthly grooming. 

Joonmyun tips his head forward, laughs as Minhyuk snaps the scissors menacingly by his ears, irritated by his third awful, awful pun since Minhyuk started. "I'll leave it crooked," he threatens. I'll hide all the scissors, and you'll have to walk on foot to the store to buy another pair, looking like that. Wont even be able to run back to your old pack because you'll be too humiliated.”

Sehun swallows, the laughter dying in his throat, but Joonmyun, at least, keeps laughing. Shoulders still smooth, trembling with amusement, eyes shining.

“If you don't stop."

Joonmyun's face twists in false sternness, eyebrows smoothing, mouth pursing small and serious, but his throat vibrates with interrupted laughter, and his eyes are too bright.

“I swear,” Minhyuk insists

And Joonmyun crinkles his nose, knees knocking together as he straightens. "I'm serious," he insists. "I'm the most serious. Please ensure I look my best."

Minhyuk twists a black lock between his fingers and hums before rolling his eyes.

“You're lucky Sehun likes you so much,” he says, snapping his scissors once more in warning. “Chanyeol, too. He’d cried for years about you.” 

Sehun is painfully, painfully aware of Joonmyun’s eyes on him as Minhyuk twists his head back to angle him better, exposing his throat as he clips the too-long hair at his forehead. 

 

That night, he allows Joonmyun to stalk him. 

Improving his senses, he calls it. Making him more properly aware of what good hunting actually looks like. Another loosening of his leash that Sehun registers much, much too late, body prickling with anxiety at the prospect of Joonmyun’s betrayal, his teeth at Sehun’s throat. 

Nervous, breathing much too loud as much as he wills himself quiet, calm, Sehun is already anticipating Joonmyun’s attack, but it still catches him unaware, the sudden, ringing, bright, sharp bark, the sudden, heavy weight against his side, Sehun crashing against the ground. 

They tumble to the grass, and Joonmyun pins his shoulders, upsets the ground by their bodies with the force of his wag.

They shift after staring for several beats, Joonmyun nuzzling once into chest playfully, the once more into his chin before pulling back. His laugh is ringing, light, feels shuddery and bright even pressed into Sehun’s shoulder. He presses one long, loud, loud, smacking kiss Sehun’s sternum. 

Sehun's face feels too hot, limbs too jittery, heart beat stuttering painfully with emotion.

Joonmyun chuckles softly as he helps him up. "You don't do that to your prey, though," he whispers. "Not if you have any hope of bringing home the prize." His eyes curve with laughter, and Sehun wonders if he looks as breathless and flushed and helpless as he feels, hopes vainly that he doesn’t.

 

Together, they run. Together, they stalk, pounce. Together, they kill. A rabbit. 

And oh no. 

Sehun’s stomach roils, and he gags, then stumbles forward to press his face against the bark, forcing his stomach calm, willing the world to stop spinning, his heart to stop pounding, the blood—oh gods, the blood—

He jumps when Joonmyun’s hand lands on his waist. Light, soft, so, so small, but grounding nonetheless. Sehun jerks back from the touch. Joonmyun presses even closer, harder, fingers kneading into the trembling, goosebumped skin at the small of his back. 

“It’s okay,” he whispers. “Hey, it’s okay. You’re okay.”

And he squeezes, and Sehun chokes back a sob. 

“It’s okay. You’re okay,” he repeats. 

But Sehun isn't. Not really. Not if Joonmyun is gonna insist on pressing on all the raw, festering parts that Sehun has tried to crudely stitch back together, the parts that smart at touch. Not if he's gonna insist on picking at all the callouses that Sehun’s developed, teasing at all the gnarled, ugly, ugly places until Sehun’s entire body feels like an aching, open, festering sore.

Not when this about more than his ability to hunt, about so much more that Sehun's body trembles from just the thought of it. 

It’s not okay. He’s not okay. Joonmyun, fuck, fuck, fuck—why did he—

The bark bites into his skin, scrapes against his forehead, cheeks, nose, as he attempts to burrow himself away and safe and not here, not now, now like this. 

Joonmyun’s fingers slide up his shoulders, curl, pull him away. Sehun chokes back another sob when he meets his eyes. 

“Yifan, he was too squeamish at first, too,” Joonmyun says. “He threw up the first time he caught a rabbit. He didn’t bite hard enough at first. It was still alive. It was still suffering. I had to—” Joonmyun mimes a biting motion. 

Sehun gropes back, hands scrambling, scraping against the tree. And Joonmyun’s hands curl around his wrists to halt the movement. “I’m not Yifan.” 

“I know that, but you’re also not the first wolf to recoil at the idea of hurting another living creature, you. Not even the first Alpha. Not even the first leader. And it’s okay.”

But it _isn’t_. And Joonmyun is lying. 

“It’s like you want me to—You want me to be like Yifan…You—you want me to need you. To be beholden to you. You want me to owe you. Like he does.”

Joonmyun blinks, hands loosening before falling at his own sides. “You act as if you’ve forgotten that you’re the one keeping me here. That I’m your captive. That you kidnapped me from my home.” His gaze drops to his feet, and kicks at a rock, speaks again much, much softer. “Sometimes I almost forget, too. But you’re the one that makes me need you. Makes me beholden to you. Makes me owe you.”

Sehun doesn’t know how to respond, so he doesn’t, exhales loudly as he lets the silence drag and drag and drag, watching Joonmyun’s worn, dusty shoes, too, then the tremble of his fingers, then the unsteady heave of his chest, finally the blooming vulnerability in his dark, dark eyes. 

“I hate the taste of blood in my mouth,” he finally says. “Hate the brutality. Hate that—hate that that’s how I have to be to be strong.” 

“You’re tender-hearted,” Joonmyun breathes back, still so, so soft, so, so fragile. 

Just like me, Sehun thinks. Soft and fragile, weak just like me. 

“Don’t,” he says. 

Joonmyun sighs. 

“I’m not treating you like a pup, Sehun.” His words measured, slow, painfully, painfully kind. “This isn’t how I train pups. I’m not asking you to chase butterflies or pounce on frogs. I’m not promising you it’ll be easier when you grow int your legs and paws…I'm just trying to help, but if you don’t want that then just say.” 

Sehun nods, exhales. “No," he says. “No, I just—Yes, I would like your help.” 

"Chase me again.”

 

Sehun does, catches him, then lets him go.

 

And very often, it’s just running. Together. As a unit. 

 

Joonmyun nuzzles into his side, once, twice, yipping, sniffing, howling when Sehun pushes back, wrestles him onto the ground. They tumble together, tails wagging. 

Joonmyun lets him win this time, tongue lolling to the side playfully before baring his throat with a whine. Sehun stares, heart thumping painfully in his chest as he registers all at once how bright Joonmyun’s eyes are, how warm his fur, how close they are, how helplessly, achingly full with longing his entire body feels.

It burns through his body, stings in his eyes, and he can’t shift, can’t let that show on his face. Has to stay like this, confused, vibrating with need like this. 

Joonmyun’s muzzle skims his neck, and Sehun almost bites out of instinct, nuzzles into it pathetically instead. 

And even as a wolf, Joonmyun is beaming.

Even after he shifts, even when he's hard, breathless, panting, his lips are stretched into the widest, prettiest grin.

 

They wander further out. Near the river. Otters, Joonmyun says. Easy. 

Supposed to be easy, but Sehun is unsuccessful. But by the end, Sehun is drenched in mud, drying, flaking on his skin when he shifts. Joonmyun reaches out for his hand, reassures him, and his fingers look so small and pale and clean against his skin, the touch gentle enough to have tingles crawling up Sehun’s spine, heat racing through his veins.

“That was a good try,” he says. “You got closer,” he adds.

Joonmyun’s praise drums through him, gratifying and warm, and Sehun bites his lip to keep from smiling too hard, giving Joonmyun that satisfaction.

Joonmyun’s fingers skip over the shell of his ear, down around his jawline, throat before settling on his shoulder. His eyes are still scrunched and lips still parted with laughter. He winks, and heat floods Sehun’s face. 

“Red looks really good on you,” he says, tracing the flush Sehun can feel staining across his face and chest, and Sehun blinks rapidly past the sharp spike of mortification, stiffening. "But it doesn't help you blend in.”

Flustered, Sehun shoves at his shoulders, races towards the river, and Joonmyun, still laughing, follows.

Laughing as he stumbles into the water, laughing as he splashes him, laughing even as Sehun overwhelms him with a burst of water. 

 

They sit side by side, thigh to thigh, watching the flickering flames as they wait for the showers, Joonmyun picking idly at the caked mud on Sehun’s kneecap, thigh. 

And Joonmyun feels so comfortable there, so familiar, so right, so very much like he belongs. 

He doesn’t. 

Sehun, he does forget, too. 

“Why haven’t you left?” he asks suddenly. 

He can. Sehun knows he can. Why hasn’t he?

“I’m your hostage,” Joonmyun says. “I’m not allowed to leave. Not unless you tell me.”

But no, no, Sehun remembers the way his body had turned towards the horizon, how he'd had a chance but squandered it. And then another. And then one more. Even though Sehun hadn’t broken him yet. Hasn't broken him yet. Isn’t breaking him at all, honestly. 

Tell me to tell you.

Joonmyun's hands curl around his knees, tensing and untensing.

"I'm sorry," Sehun finally says. Emotion thick in his throat, regret bubbling in his stomach. “I think I need you,” he wants to say. “I think I need you like Yifan needs you. I think I need you more, maybe. And I think that I need you to show me how to use you the right way. I don’t know how. I never learned."

Joonmyun only nods. 

 

Baekhyun, heedless of the tension between them, emerges from the showers, belting. 

Sehun motions for Joonmyun to go first. 

He watches the flames die, his heart aching, body trembling, presented once more with an awful, awful choice, his shoulders protesting against the heavy burden.

 

“Let’s run,” Joonmyun says by way of greeting after dinner. He strips naked, drags Sehun forward into the woods, and they run, and they wrestle, and Joonmyun puts up a real fight this time, wiggling out of his grasp, biting at his shoulder, shoving with his hind legs, breathless from exertion, amused. He’s panting, sweating, bare soft, pale shoulders shivering beneath Sehun’s palms, a bead of sweat of trickling down his cheekbone, throat, disappearing into the soft ground beneath him. 

Sehun stumbles back, and Joonmyun’s smiling, amused, even though he’s lost, even though it was a fair game this time. He’s hard again, too, briefly captivating, his eyes a tingle on Sehun’s goosebumped skin. 

 

He doesn’t ask to accompany Chanyeol on his supply run, but he returns just the same. Won’t leave until he’s told to, Sehun knows. 

That evening when they return, the pick up truck teeming with supplies, the other pack members crowd around them as usual, but linger when Joonmyun offers to show his pictures. “Our pack,” he says, and Sehun blinks past the tingle that crawls up his spine, nodding. 

They’re almost comically careful as they handle the pictures, passing them around one by one, mindful of their grips, sure not to get fingerprints on the glossy surface. 

And they’re gorgeous. Make them look like an entire community, too. Beautiful and full of hope and thriving, too. 

The spidering scars on Hoseok’s back. The ripple of Hyunwoo’s straining muscles in the twinkle of twilight as he struggles to tug the wild boar’s carcass forward. The way Jaehyun looks bent forward, haloed golden by the afternoon sun as he scrubs their clothing. Taemin's laugh. Minhyuk’s face dimpled with laughter, elbow-deep in sliced cabbage. Jongin’s hands, smeared with blood. The puddles of water left outside their bathhouse. Chanyeol with wild flowers in his hair. And blurry, unfocused shots of them wrestling in the water, white teeth, dark hair, starbursts and halos of light. 

Sehun, too, his face hard, cast in shadows as he squints into the early morning horizon.

“I took that before the Full Moon,” Joonmyun says, tapping his finger against Sehun’s eyebrows. “See, Alpha,” he continues, voice light, teasing, but smile not quite reaching his eyes. “This is the face you make when you think you have to be tough. When you think that’s all an Alpha can be. When no one is even allowed to touch you.”

He places the photo on Sehun’s knee, tilts another forward. Sehun, laughing, out of focus, water dripping from the tendrils of hairs plastered to his forehead. Young, carefree. The last pack run, he knows. 

“But this is how you look when you forget that. Boyish, but big. This Sehun, he feels much more human.”

 

After dinner, Joonmyun motions him towards the forest, towards their hunting grounds, and Sehun stumbles to comply, smiling already, bending to tug off his shoes, socks, pants, underwear already. 

Joonmyun coughs, shakes his head. Pulls off his own shirt—his borrowed shirt, Baekhyun’s shirt—over his head. Kicks off his shoes, socks. 

“You mean to claim me,” he says, and he’s shaking.

Sehun is too entranced watching the ripple of muscles in his stomach, the lazy kiss of fading sunlight there, to register the words at first. He jerks when he does. 

“That isn’t—how did you‐”

“Chanyeol told me.” He laughs, but it sounds uncomfortable, tight. He peels off his jean shorts, tugs off his stripped boxers. His bare thighs are trembling. “He was excited. Said that he supported it. That he’d talked to Baekhyun about how perfect we were for each other, how he thought that maybe you’d finally found someone to balance you out. You mean to claim me. So claim me.” 

“No, I don’t. I don’t. I wouldn’t—”

He touches him, safe, his shoulders, but Joonmyun is still quivering. He pulls back. 

Joonmyun’s voice sounds wet when he speaks again. So, so, so small. “I played along. Said I thought we balanced each other, too.   
But I don’t think…I don’t think he understood the implications.” His shoulders roll forward, tense, tense in that way he’d been that first night. _You mean to take me_ , his body taut with fear, apprehension, the knowledge that Sehun could hurt him like that, the knowledge that he _might_.

“I would _never_ do that. I’m not going to do that.I—”

He closes his mouth, sighs, shakes his head.

“You aren’t a savage,” Joonmyun echoes.

“I’m not.”

“You threatened to take me if Yifan doesn’t give up Minhyung, the land. You—you claimed you had a _right_ to just because I’m an Omega, and you’re an Alpha. Old ways, they’re savage. You’re using old ways, and that’s savage, Sehun.”

“Joonmyun—”

“Keeping me here, that’s also savage.”

Guilt prickles up his spine, settles heavy and oppressive in the nape of his neck. 

“Prove to me you’re stronger than Yifan then,” he declares, abruptly, falsely light. “Catch me.”

Sehun bounds after him, scrambling still to apologize, to _explain_ , for Joonmyun to just hear him out. He pins him to the ground, but pulls back panting, terrified when Joonmyun bares his throat.

 

This tension, it doesn’t dissipate either. But they ignore it. Continue their lessons. 

 

“I’ve had to bear the burden for all of them,” he says when Joonmyun mutters about him being so _difficult_. So stubborn. So unwilling to accept his own shortcomings and actually let other people help him. Trust them enough to let them fill in gaps in his abilities. That’s what pack hunting means. “I have to be someone worthy of their trust. I’ve had to be strong enough to keep them together.“

Joonmyun sighs, exasperate, long-suffering, but his hand on Sehun’s shoulder, his fingers on Sehun’s cheek, their fond, so, so soft. Excruciatingly so. 

“Trust is mutual, Sehun. Trust is...you can’t ask them to trust you when you don’t trust them. Can’t ask them to trust you when you don’t even understand yourself enough to know what parts of you needs fixing or need caring.” 

“You don’t understand. This is the way...This is the way we’ve survived this long. You don’t understand.” 

“Leader,” Joonmyun breathes. “ _Sehun_.”

“Yifan is weak,” he finally says.

“Because he relies on an Omega, on me.”

“Yes.”

"And you’re strong because you lick your own wounds and cry only where you’re sure no one can hear you?"

“Yes."

His eyes are dark, look nearly liquid as they blink up at him. “Okay,” Joonmyun finally breathes.

Sehun catches a rabbit, doesn’t vomit, but still can’t stop his shaking. 

Joonmyun’s hand wavers like he’s itching to touch him, but he doesn’t. Leaves when Sehun dismisses him. 

 

Sehun bathes in the river alone, lets the rough drag of his own palm distract him from the confusing, debilitating desire still coursing through his veins. 

Callouses are meant to protect something tender and vulnerable and helpless, and Joonmyun scrapping his way beneath makes Sehun feel tender and vulnerable and helpless. Weak. 

He scrubs against his thighs harder, harder, harder. 

Sehun is excruciatingly, pathetically, helplessly, helplessly fragile, splintering, full to bursting, trembling, tearing at the seams, and it’s easier to hide it as a wolf, always, always as a wolf to keep himself from being torn open, torn apart. 

Curled up in his furs, he shifts to sleep instead as a wolf because wolves, they don’t cry. Just whimper and writhe quietly beneath the silver moon. 

 

They hunt for foxes, startle them, then run. Tumble. 

Joonmyun yelps playfully, licks over his face. Sehun nuzzles helplessly back. 

If they were humans, his face would be buried in crook of Sehun’s neck like this, his mouth small, pink, hot, achingly soft. Sehun is painfully grateful that they aren’t human.  
But Joonmyun whimpers at his throat, licks again, and a helpless, hot tremor wracks through his body. 

Sehun, he’s paralyzed with desire. 

Joonmyun’s tail thumps against the ground, and the moment is broken.

Sehun jerks back. He feels naked, extra naked as they shift, fur melting, bones breaking, reshaping. And Joonmyun’s hands wind around his shoulders to keep him close. 

There’s bits of dirt, dried leaves in his hair, and he smells like pine needles, like home as he tumbles back with him on the ground, drags Sehun’s body completely over his own. The smell is strongest at his throat, the skin softest, most responsive there, too. Sehun can barely hear past the violent rush of his heartbeat, the blood in his ears.

And oh, there’s no fight to him, not even the pretense of it, just heady, dizzying, awful, awful submission instead.

_Catch me,_ his eyes challenge. _Catch me and take me_. 

Sehun shudders as Joonmyun’s fingers skip down his spine. He noses helplessly harder, is rewarded with the softest, shakiest, most gorgeous exhale, small and pretty and damningly demanding. It echoes through his whole body. 

He feels the echo also of Joonmyun's trembling lips against Sehun's throat, the race of Joonmyun's pulse against his quivering lips. Sehun feels pinned or bound or broken or tamed or flayed open or aching.

Joonmyun’s fingers skip over his lower back, tiptoe—start to tiptoe—over the swell of his bare ass, and Sehun staggers back with a broken sob, scrambles to his feet. Desire is still singing persistently through his veins, and oh gods, oh gods.

An owl hoots somewhere in the distance, haunting, dark, and Joonmyun also rises to his feet, naked and small and beautiful and so so so damningly demanding. And his stomach twists, limbs ache, heart jerks witt longing. 

"This is a mistake," he manages in a breathless, harsh whisper. Quiet, breathy, broken, but he knows Joonmyun's heard, sliding closer, still so, so distressingly close.

And people have broken for less, he thinks. Empires have toppled for less. 

Joonmyun watches him for several, several beats, ethereal and hauntingly handsome in the pale moonlight. “This—this is why you still can’t cut it as a hunter,” he finally says, voice falsely, sickeningly light. “Wasteful even now. You’re too hesitant to ever take the kill bite. Suck at follow through.”

 

He sits across from him at dinner, face pale and contemplative and beautiful, and Sehun is overcome with that same reckless, devastating want, watching him eat, watching him retreat into his tent, watching, wanting, wanting, wanting.

It takes a long, long time for sleep to finally overtake him.

 

They don't mention it at the next lesson, but Sehun stays stiff when Joonmyun touches him. His shoulder, his waist, the small of his back. And Joonmyun eventually stops, hands clenched into fists, eyes guarded, chin set—closed off, distant as before. 

And it hurts, but Sehun reasons it’s the good kind of hurt. The healing kind of hurt. The fevered ache of growth, too. Wounded skin stitching itself back together, muscles aching and tearing and mending with the pain of strengthening, a heart protesting as it grows harder. 

Sehun catches another rabbit, just barely misses a marten, longs for the weight of Joonmyun’s hand around his waist, but burns still from the warmth of his smile.

 

By the next time, the tension has stopped prickling beneath Sehun's skin, but fragile, fragile, helpless desire storms through him still, tingles through his body without his permission. 

He’s clumsy. He’s young. He’s weak. He’s broken, he realizes. 

And panic, muted, alarmed, horrific, it bubbles in his throat. 

“It’s okay,” Joonmyun says, breathless, a chuckle, warm, even fond. The fading light dances across his hair, his skin as he laughs, golden and beautiful and amused. And it isn't fair how much Sehun wants him, then. Isn't okay.

Resentment, sudden and sharp, twists in Sehun's gut. 

“I don’t need your approval,” he snaps. And Joonmyun blinks, swallows. The brightness leaves his eyes, slow, slow, slow. Sehun watches it bleed out until theres only hollowness there, resignation, timidity. Familiar and yet oh so foreign. “I’m not some pup you’re training. I’m not—you’re an Omega.”

“I am.” Joonmyun's voice is even, placating. A parent, Sehun notes again, calming his petulant pup.

That knife of resentment twists tighter, burns up his throat, curls bitter and biting on his tongue.

“And I’m an Alpha. I'm Head Alpha. I'm the leader."

“Yes, you always go through great pains to remind everyone of that fact. Like you think we’ll forget. Like you think we can’t smell it on you.”

“You don’t treat me like an Alpha. That’s why I have to remind you.”

Joonmyun swallows again, so hard his lips part. And oh they're so achingly ruddy like this, and oh, Sehun just wants to taste. And oh, that makes him even angrier. 

“Rank means a lot more to you than it does to me. You have such rigidly defined roles. You’re so convinced you have to be strong and big and never wrong or never hurt."

“I’ve had to be strong. Had to be big. Had to be right. Had to be invincible. It’s the only way to survive. You aren't an Alpha. You aren't a leader. You don't understand. This is the only way I could be to keep my pack alive. This was the only way, so it isn’t wrong."

His voice wavers, and he swallows now, too, tries to dislodge the blunt wedge of emotion in his throat. 

"It must be exhausting,” Joonmyun says, placating, soothing, reassuring. “Must be hard to be so strong all the time, Alpha.” 

And no, this isn’t—isn’t what he wants. 

“You make your Omegas too strong,” Sehun continues. “You make your Alphas too weak. Yifan, they way he depends on you, how you help him run the pack, that has made him weak. He has you, but that isn't—I'm by myself, and I can't be weak. I can't be weak if we have any hope of surviving. I can't be like Yifan. Or like whoever led before him." 

Joonmyun tenses, but doesn't take the bait, exhales long and slow instead.

And Sehun wishes that he would fight back, so that Sehun would be justified in _hurting_. 

“It’s okay to need people,” Joonmyun says. 

“Clearly, he doesn’t need you all that much. Clearly, they’re fine without you.” 

“That’s—that’s the point of leadership,” he laughs. "They aren't supposed to be paralyzed with inadequacy. Yifan isn't some bubbling fool just because he asks me to help him, just because he asks people for help. You wouldn't be either. If you relied on someone."

“Why does it have to be you? You’re going to leave,” he says. “When Yifan accepts. You’re going to leave.”

“Everyone leaves, Sehun. Everyone is fucking leaving.”

The words register like a slap, stinging, hot. 

“Minhyung left. The female wolves. The families. They aren’t coming back. So you might as well learn to use what you have, who you have.”

“Not you,” Sehun insists. “You’re meant to leave. This isn’t your pack. You’re not my mate. YOu’re not my—you aren’t even my Jongin…You’re’ a means towards an end. You can leave,” he says, and it sounds like an accusation, feels like one, too, the hurt and betrayal—illogical and sharp—that pulse through his shaking body.

“I haven’t,” Joonmyun says. “I haven’t, have I?"

"But you can—even when this falls apart, Joonmyun. You can leave. This is all I have."

Joonmyun's laugh is too sharp, brittle and cutting at the edges, but still somehow beautiful. "Why are you so cruel, Sehun? What do you get out of this? Keeping me here against my will but insisting I have to prove loyalty to you? Insisting I'm in the wrong when you stole me away from my home? My family? My life? You're so scared I'll leave because you know you would leave if you could. You're so scared of hurting things but so fucking hesitant to admit that you're hurting me. That this is savage.”

His hands, Sehun realizes, are trembling. 

“You’ve already caught me. Do you understand? You’ve already caught me and have been keeping me bleeding out here because you’re too hesitant to take the kill bite."

And no, this isn’t—isn’t what Sehun wanted of this conversation. 

“You’re Alpha is weak,” he says, and Joonmyun laughs again, but it sounds wet. 

“You don’t understand us. Don’t understand there are other ways of being. There’s a reason we’re succeeding, and you aren’t. You focus too much on rank. On strength. On fear. Not trust. Not respect. Not harmony." He pauses, inhales shakily, and his voice is suddenly soft again, soothing, placating, honey sweet and dangerous. “It has be mutual. You honestly...you rule like a pup. You rule like a child." 

“You don’t know your place,” he counters. “You're just an Omega. You don’t know what it means to actually rule.” 

And oh, Joonmyun’s lip catches between his teeth, and his fists turn. And Sehun, he hasn’t seen him look like that since that first night. He’s found where it hurts, and he presses down harder, twists. 

“You think that I need to do as you do. Think everyone needs to be like you. Think you’re so enlightened, because you’re an Omega shadow leader. But even then, you’re _just_ a shadow leader. Even in your own pack, you don’t know your place. Don’t know that they tried to tell you that you couldn’t lead there either. They picked a foreigner over you,” he guesses. “Couldn’t want an Omega as anything but a nontitle holder, advanced as they are. You still weren’t enough.”

And Sehun feels sick, sick satisfaction in watching the way hurt, indignation color his face. Ugly, stiff, but no less achingly handsome. 

Joonmyun’s shoulders stiffen, jaw locks. His eyes on Sehun’s face make him want to squirm away, but he holds his ground. Presses harder, harder, harder.

“Even in your pack, you're just an Omega.”

Joonmyun's entire body is taut with tension.

And Joonmyun’s voice, when he finally speaks, is low, dangerous. 

“You have a lot of opinions on proper leadership for a despot so incompetent he makes pups run away. Kidnaps helpless Omegas to even be taken seriously.”

Adrenaline rushes through his body, a hot, hot, jolt, thwarted, just, just, just barely contained. His teeth ache, fingertips itch, skin prickles, restless and reckless and violent and sudden with the desire to shift, to _hurt_ —tear him apart. 

His rhino. His dog. His captive. 

“You have no fucking right to talk to me that way. You’re my prisoner. My hostage. I’m your master.” 

Joonmyun’s laugh is hollow, sharp, so much uglier than his real laugh, so much more haunting.

“May I have your permission to go back to camp, _master_?”

“Go,” he says. He hopes deliriously maybe that Joonmyun will leave, maybe take the responsibility for him once and for all.

 

He feels Joonmyun’s coldness like the phantom ache in of an extracted, rotted, tooth, numb, haunting, impossible to ignore. 

Joonmyun does not sit near him at dinner that night breakfast the next morning, noon or dinner the next night there. 

Does not lay beside him in their group den, either, and Sehun is acutely are of the exact timbre of Joonmyun’s every inhale and exhale, the shuddery hum of his sleepy sounds, how often Sehun has come to expect them pressed to the nape of his neck. 

 

The pinecones that Sehun leaves outside Joonmyun’s tent are smashed the next morning. 

 

The morning after, too. 

 

For his third attempt, he leaves wildflowers, a basket of persimmons, as his father had once, apologizing one evening to his mother after spending three extra nights on a hunting party

At noon, Joonmyun sits across from him, lingers after they've cleared the tables, guides him to the trees for privacy.

“I’m sorry,” he finally says. Joonmyun's palm brushes his, and it stings. “I didn’t mean it. I know they need you. I know you’re important. I know…I know I’m starting to—starting to need you, too, and it scares me.” 

“I know.”

“You were forced to be strong without reason, too young. Forced yourself to be strong without reason too young.” 

Something stinging and large and painful lodges itself in his throat. Something more stinging and large and painful tightens around his ribs.

He blinks, coughs, breathes, breathes. 

"You were Minhyung’s age,” Joonmyun says. “You were a pup. It's awful that you had to do that when you were still just a boy."

Taemin had been one, too. Jongin one, too. Hyunwoo, too. Chanyeol, too. Even Hakyeon, even their eldest member, he’d been just two years into maturity. They’d managed though. Even as pups. Even with a leader that ruled as a pup. They’d survived, and they still are—surviving. 

“I’m not anymore.”

Joonmyun’s eyes trace over his shoulder, his face, trace downwards to where his hands are curled around his knees. Tight. Like a child. Sehun consciously unfurls his fingers, and Joonmyun’s hand brushes against his, soothing, soft, but he laces their fingers together, squeezes _hard_.

“You aren’t,” he agrees. 

Joonmyun's hands smooth up his sides, over his shoulders, squeezing, then molding, pressing consciously, deliberately into all the knotted, painful places. 

And Sehun hates himself for melting into the touch, hates himself for being weak enough to need it. 

“But it's okay,” he continues. “Okay to feel like you're still a pup.” And his fingers squeeze even tighter. Goosebumps tingle along his spine. "It's okay to want someone to treat you that way. It's okay. We won't respect you less. You need to stop thinking that it’s strong to push people away and suffer in silence.” 

Sehun’s skin is so sensitized, he shivers, exhales much too loud, and Joonmyun’s hand climbs back up, over his shoulder, inwards towards his throat, settles finally on his cheekbone, hesitant, soft, unnervingly tender. 

His eyes are dark, lashes heavy. Sehun is trapped. 

Tears prickle in his eyes, and that weight—familiar but no less debilitating, no less terrifying—closes around his throat. Joonmyun rubs softly in the hollow beneath his eyes, over his eyelashes when Sehun’s eyes flutter shut. His thumb skims around, back down, down, down. Sehun’s lips part beneath the pad of Joonmyun’s thumb. 

“Strong,” he says. “A leader,” he says. “Do so much, bear so much you don’t even know your own limits. Keep pushing past them.” 

“You’re stronger,” Sehun whispers, and this close, he can tastes Joonmyun’s tremor, salty and hot and heady. His lips drag, tongue catches, and he can hear taste the sharpness of Joonmyun’s exhale, too, feel the crackle of it. His heart twists in his chest. Joonmyun presses down harder, teeth, tongue, and Sehun shudders, licks the pad of his finger. Joonmyun’s exhale is shakier, nearly a moan. 

Emboldened, Sehun opens his mouth wider, licks again, bites, and Joonmyun’s fingers tremble just the slightest around his cheekbone, tighten, too, his fingernails biting into Sehun’s skin. 

Desire—molten and unnamed and reckless and dangerous—storms through him. 

Joonmyun's thumb teases over his teeth, scraping.

Delirious, Sehun wonders how a touch so tender, so soft can burn so.

 

That night, in their den, Joonmyun turns in the darkness to watch him. The moon is nearly full, the light that caresses his face strong enough to dance over the luster of his dark eyes, the plushness of his parted lips. 

Rapt, Sehun stares back, but starling, wanting, fluttering his eyes shut when Joonmyun reaches out to hold his face. 

His palm is warm, the skim of his thumb makes him gasp. His thumb presses into Sehun's lip, and Sehun inhales him shakily.

He can’t help the terrified tremor that crawls up his spine, can’t help how recklessly tight his fingers squeeze around Joonmyun’s shoulders. 

Joonmyun’s thumb drags slower over his jawline, achingly soft, excruciatingly gentle. He loops to trace over the crook of his throat, presses just the slightest bit down. Pale and captivating and ethereal in the moonlight, he slides even closer, mouth following the path his fingers have already traced. And if they were wolves, Sehun could be whining—pliant and vulnernable and trembling—pinned in that fine, fine line between claiming and tearing out another wolf’s throat. 

Immobilized and breathless and helpless and ruined like this, Sehun isn’t sure if he’s a rhino or an elephant, a dog or a master, an Alpha or an Omega, the hunter or the hunted. 

Joonmyun’s lips part, the barest scrape of teeth. 

Goosebumps shiver through his limbs, and sensitized, heart in his throat, he whimpers, nearly moans, hands tightening, body melting, so achingly, achingly aware of all the places their bodies touch. 

“Alpha,” he says. 

“Joonmyun,” Sehun responds, shuddering. And Joonmyun inhales deeply at his throat, parts his lips just just just enough for Sehun to shudder at the wet heat of it, the wet promise of it, before humming, pulling away. His eyes are so painfully dark, lips red, and he’s beautiful and dangerous. “Joonmyun,” he repeats, and Joonmyun blinks heavily, the movement casting hard shadows across his cheekbones. 

He touches him once more, tracing from temple to jawline before turning away. 

Pinned, unsettled, unraveling, Sehun quakes. 

 

They hunt together again. Lynxes once more. Joonmyun takes the kill bite. 

His fur is stained with it, bright red against the midnight black, and he’s predatory and powerful and dangerous and beautiful. Sehun curls his teeth delicately around the wild cat’s body, willing away his nausea as he helps him drag the body to the fire. 

Another blessing, but Sehun helps this time in picking it apart. 

Together. A unit. 

 

It’s Wonshik is the one that’s gone to the packhouse, but it’s Jongin that approaches him afterwards. 

And oh, he already knows. If it’s Jongin, oh if it’s Jongin—

Dread settles leaden in his stomach. “An answer,” he ventures shakily, and Jongin nods slowly, reaches out to hold his hand. 

“He says that he’s giving us until Moon Run.” 

Sehun exhales. 

“If you mean to—mean to claim him then this is really—”

“I know,” he snaps. “I don’t—”

“You can’t just make half-decisions and half-threats, Sehun. You can’t cite old laws and old ways if you can’t actually stomach the consequences.”

“You’d have me claim him—take him by force. You’d have me—”

“I’d have you set him free…Your humanity is screaming back at you about how _wrong_ this is, Sehun. You don’t want this either."

“But I can’t, Jongin. I can’t. You don’t—I _can’t_.”

_You’re tender-hearted_ , he remembers. And worse for it, he thinks. Weaker for it. This heart that I can never seem to tear completely free. 

“We have until the next moon.”

 

The very next night, Joonmyun is torn away from him. 

 

It’s vestigial, awful, awful, awful, the male omega heat. And Joonmyun’s, oh Joonmyun’s is a torture unlike any he’s ever experienced. 

His scent—natural, heady, intoxicating—is sharp and tangy and sweet, filtering through the night air, a siren’s song, more potent than the call of the moon, an aching, echoing bone deep hunger reverberating over and over and over again, crescendoing into a feverpitch of need.

Need multiplied. 

Because, oh how Sehun _needs_. 

Sehun's body burns, and he twists his fingers into his furs, gulps, gasps, grasps, want and wants and wants.

And even through the tidal, heavy rush of desperate emotions, the rush of blood in his ears, the desperate race of his heart, he can make out the soft, hitching whine of Joonmyun's cresting cries, the deep rumple of the other Omegas’ soothing words of comfort. Wonshik, Hoseok, Baekhyun, Jihoon soothing him through it.

Sehun tears through his blankets, then at the soft ground beneath, palms scraping over soil and stone. He burns hotter, hotter, hotter, face buried in his shoulder as he forces himself still, tries tries tries, fails fails fails not to imagine the way Joonmyun's small body must twist and burn and glisten and dew with need. Need for someone like him. 

An Alpha, an Alpha to hold him steady as he shatters. 

 

Those three days feel like eons, Sehun filled to the brim with violent, reckless, hot, hot energy, aggression, purpose, need, no proper outlet. Sehun races through their lands, tears weeds barehanded, fishes, washes clothing, dishes, works his body spent, exhausted but not enough to stop wanting, not enough to drown out he sounds of Joonmyun’s want, too. Not enough to smoother the thought of how he could help. 

 

It’s liberating, liberating for them both, Sehun imagines, when it ends. 

 

Joonmyun feels warm still—too warm, still—curled loose but steadying around him in their shared tent that night. 

“Residual heat,” he apologizes when Sehun shudders, laughter in his voice. 

He shifts, adjusts, the jut of his hipbone just briefly knocking against Sehun’s ass. 

He shudders again, arches back, and Joonmyun curls even tighter. That awful, awful haunting scent still lingers on his skin, enough to make Sehun’s gut twist with damning longing. 

That doesn’t fade. 

But it at least calms to a restless thrum beneath his veins, compartmentalized, ignored. 

 

That weekend, after all his lessons, after all his training, Sehun joins the hunting party. Joonmyun, still smelling so much like something that Sehun wants to keep, by his side. 

It’s dizzyingly perfect like this, working as a unit like this. And Sehun he’s ready, and Sehun, he finally understands _why_. 

And it's Sehun that lunges, teeth tearing at the deer's throat, mouth flooding with blood, so much, wet and hot and musky on his tongue, but no, no, not enough, he realizes. 

The buck, it screams. It fights. It hurts. 

And Sehun bites harder, tearing, feeling the erratic pulse of this hurting, dying thing, the crunch of its bones beneath his jaw, and Sehun can't—doesn't know why he thought he could. 

Oh fuck, oh fuck, he unhinges his jaw, trembling as he stumbles back. 

Away, away, away

Gods why had he—how can he—

He registers comfort, an attempt at comfort in the way that Joonmyun’s muzzle presses into his shoulders, grounding as the ground quakes beneath him. 

And no, no.

But Sehun, he can’t—can’t stay wolf like this, can’t can’t can’t stop shaking when he abandons the body, his pack, shifts back into being a human, runs and runs and runs—away, bare feet stumbling over uneven ground, water-smoothed stones. And he doesn’t want any of them to see, doesn’t want Joonmyun especially to see, doesn’t want Joonmyun to _know_ , but oh, he’s there, seeing, knowing, reaching forward to touch him, too. Comfort him, too. Disarm him, too. Wash him, too. 

His fingers are gentle, but Sehun aches all over, blinking rapidly to will away the tears prickling in his eyes.

His kindness, his patience, it’s agonizing. It’s tormenting. It’s damning.

And oh, Sehun burns for even _more_. 

His hands look so pale, small as they scrub across his palms, and he ducks his head as he works, thumbs dragging over Sehun's palms, then over his wrists, squeezing in comfort.

A protest crawls up Sehun’s throat—Joonmyun, he’s only an Omega, not even Pack, and he shouldn’t be touching him like this, he doesn’t even fucking know—but he swallows heavily, needing it too much. He leaves the anxious objection tickling there at the back of his tongue. His throat feels thick with emotion. Entire body taut, taut, taut with it, too. 

And Joonmyun’s hands, his small, pale, painfully Omega hands continue to graze his skin. They squeeze around the crooks of his elbows, too, then skim over his trembling forearms, settle on his shoulders, and he can feel Joonmyun’s eyes on his face. And it makes him feel young and vulnerable and trembling. Weak, tiny, not ever as a leader should. Not if he wants to be strong enough to keep his pack safe. 

“Joonmyun, you shouldn’t—”

Joonmyun squeezes once at his shoulders, hard, the blunt edges of his fingernails digging into Sehun’s skin, and Sehun shivers. He feels even younger, more vulnerable, weaker, tinier, less, less, less the leader he should be. 

“It's okay to rely on people, you know,” Joonmyun says, and his thumbs knead into the contours of Sehun’s collarbone, trace over the raised skin, agonizingly soft, soothing. “Even Omegas. Even enemies. Even prisoners.”

Sehun stutters out a nod—even though it isn’t, even though he knows, even though Sehun can’t begin to need Joonmyun only if he’ll leave— 

Joonmyun dips into the water again, streaks warm and soothing and small over his arms again. Then he tips his head up to wipe at Sehun’s face, too. His hands are soft, steady as they skim his skin. His cheekbones, his nose, his quivering mouth.

Sehun thinks of the blood that must be there and wills away the potent wave of nausea that bubbles up his throat, the crippling sense of helplessness. Excruciating half-formed memories of a pup abandoned, thrust too fast into adulthood, the violence, oh the violence that he’s faced, the chaos, the pain, the loneliness, that violence, that chaos, that pain, that loneliness that he’s engendered, too. 

“Yifan,” Joonmyun’s continues, whispering over his cupid’s bow, curling out towards his jawline, “even Yifan, who is older than you, has been leader longer than you, even he needs people. Even he needs me.”

And something else twists in Sehun’s stomach then, smaller, uglier, no less nauseating. It dissipates, slow, slow, slow, fragile, fragile, fragile with each goosebump-inducing touch. 

“In my pack,” Sehun manages after several, several beats, trembling as Joonmyun’s fingers whisper into the hollows beneath his eyes, over the quiver of his cheekbones, around to the tremble of his jawline. “This is a mate’s duty. Or a parent’s.”

_I can’t need you in that way. You can’t be needed in that way either_

“In mine, too," Joonmyun breathes, cupping his cheeks, meeting his gaze. And oh, it burns.

But Joonmyun doesn’t stop, motions for Sehun to crouch so we can get the dirt, blood and filth behind his ears, too, over his scalp. His fingers linger on the nape of his neck as he scoops more water onto Sehun’s goose-bumped skin. And Sehun is painfully aware of how naked they both are, how young and vulnerable he is, how hard he’s still trembling. 

Joonmyun washes over his hands for him, squeezes his wrist before pulling away. Sehun hopes hysterically, deliriously, desperately, desperately, desperately that Joonmyun can’t feel the reckless race of his pulse.

His throat feels thick, skin much, much, much too sensitive. A livewire of barely-contained, crushing, crushing feelings, breathless realization, he’s trembling still as they amble back to camp, fingers spasming around Joonmyun’s palm. 

 

They’ve prepared the buck in their absence, and the meat is already smoking, the rice already boiling, bowls, spoons, chopsticks, cups of rice wine already served. 

The wine, the fire, the feelings still simmering beneath his skin make Sehun’s head dizzy, thoughts clouded over. 

Sehun, without thinking, glides forward, a piece of meat between his fingers, and Joonmyun watches him for one achingly long beat before sliding toward to suck the meat between his lips.

His fingertips burn, and the heat spreads up his arm, through his veins, concentrates on his face. And Joonmyun is watching him still as he pulls away, his mouth working, his eyelashes fluttering small and pretty and cute and dangerous. 

Sehun, unthinking, does it again, and Joonmyun doesn't pull back this time, lingers there for with his lips against Sehun's tingling fingertips. 

His eyes are so exquisitely dark and heavy on his face, lips achingly red and soft, his breath a brand Sehun imagines seared into skin.

Taming, breaking, tearing, tearing, tearing. 

Sehun chokes, has to swallow three gulps of rice wine to clear his throat. 

Jongin’s elbow jabs into his rips, teasing, and he stares hard at his food, eats in spite of the roiling his stomach. Sehun finds it hard to swallow, hard to temper the restless jitter of his legs, fingers, heart.

 

It’s pack night that night, but Sehun rushes out into the woods instead, shifts, runs, runs, runs until he's staggering inside, his limbs, mind, heart too exhausted to stay awake and yearn and want and hurt. He collapses heavily against Hyunwoo's side, focusing on the scent of his skin, strong, clean, _Alpha_ , not a sweetness so delicate it seems to melt on his tongue, ache in his belly.

 

They hunt together once more, alone once more the next night, trail after raccoon dogs. 

Sehun, when he sinks his teeth inside the animal, is efficient, fast, lethal. Finally, finally, finally successful. 

Sehun follows Joonmyun to the river again, and Joonmyun moves to wash him, lower this time, bolder, small palm skimming over the quiver of his stomach, the trembling jut of his hip, his fingers small, slight, but utterly arresting.

Sehun’s hard from the run still, skin prickling with goosebumps, tightening with want.

Quaking, Sehun braves a hand to Joonmyun’s shoulder, then inwards to his chest. Swallowing a gasp, he notes how big his hand looks. Bold, bumbling, he traces, skims, and he can feel the way that Joonmyun’s heart rate stutters, the way his skin trembles. Sehun maps across the smooth contours of his sternum, the ripple of his ribs, the dip of his stomach, the swell of his waist, the ribboning scars there—Yifan, and his tantrums, Joonmyun informs him around a breathy almost moan, used to goad him into treating me like an equal, tearing at me like a real Alpha. 

And Sehun wonders how anyone could ever hurt him. How anyone could ever want to. 

He lingers there, tracing over the fine dark hair, watching the way the skin prickles with goosebumps. 

He can feel the heat of Joonmyun’s cock, hard and so, so, so close, wants it so much his body quakes with it.   
the heat of it even from here

He pulls away instead, makes to pull away. 

Joonmyun doesn’t let him. 

And somehow, they wind up on the floor, Sehun pinned beneath Joonmyun. 

Joonmyun’s hair falls into his eyes, and Sehun brushes it back. Joonmyun presses into the touch, sighs into it. And he looks so small, so slight, pale and delicate and achingly handsome, and Sehun feels helpless and reckless and powerless with desire. Sehun wonder if this is the true nature of Joonmyun's power. Taming, breaking, goring like this. Wonders if Joonmyun makes all the Alphas feel like this, if Yifan also feels bumbling, overlarge, helpless every time Joonmyun touches him, if Joonmyun and Yifan touch like this, too, why Yifan hasn’t asked him, to—

“Big bad wolf,” Joonmyun teases, and Sehun shivers beneath his palms, into his throat. He feels drunk on the racing flutter of Joonmyun’s pulse, the warm, thick, heady fragrance of his skin. It’s no less potent even when he’s anticipating it, and Sehun feels like the prey, feels like the bound, broken-spirited dog, feels like he could spend forever here, basking in the warmth and aching promise of Joonmyun’s response.

“You’re not my prey,” Sehun says. “You’re not my hostage. Please, you aren’t. Please don’t be.” 

And Joonmyun rolls them over, so it’s he that is pinned. His fingers tremble this time as they stumble down his spine, over his bare ass, slower, softer this time, maddening, exquisite, damning, perfect. And Sehun doesn’t halt his movements, doesn’t pull away, arches into the whisper-soft exploration instead, burning, quivering, lost in the bottomless black, black luster of Joonmyun’s beautiful eyes, crippled with desire. 

Joonmyun skims his fingernails over the dip of his spine, teasing, teasing, testing, testing, and Sehun mashes his face into his throat with a shivering groan. Weak with want, debilitated with desire, reckless, helpless, hunted, imploding with desire. 

"I'm not—You're not—you can leave,” he says. “I didn’t—you could always leave. I never meant to—you're free, Joonmyun. I’m not a savage. I wouldn’t—”

“I know,” Joonmyun breathes. 

“But I—I want you to stay,” he says. "Don't leave me," he whispers, pleads into the seam of his mouth, fingers trembling, heart aching as Joonmyun arches beneath him. "You can leave, but please don't."

“I know.”

I don’t know how to—

One hand slides up his body, cups his face. His thumb pressing into Sehun’s lips, and Sehun sighs, shudders into the touch. Joonmyun watches the movement, seemingly fascinated. 

“I know.”

“I need—I need

“Me,” Joonmyun finishes. 

Sehun nods, hard enough, frantic enough to dislodge Joonmyun’s touch, but he clambers into it in the next beat. 

“I don’t,” and Joonmyun tips forward to kiss him, and Sehun trembles but melts into it, melts into him. His heart aching with desire as he parts his lips and plumbs the depths of Joonmyun’s warm, wet mouth. It makes him dizzier yet, sets his aflame.

Joonmyun’s fingers tangle in his hair, dragging him even closer, touching him even more boldly, and Sehun’s fingers scramble over the soft earth beneath him, bracing as he’s lost in Joonmyun’s mouth. 

“Please,” he says, and Joonmyun hums, nips. Flames lick up his sides. “No,” he says. “Please just, only if you want. Stay with me only if you want.” Only if you’re as broken with desire for more, only if it hurts to think about us being apart, only if this is unbearable for you, too. 

“I know,” he says, and he kisses him again, and Sehun sobs into it, needs it with every aching cell in his body. 

Joonmyun’s mouth moves to his throat, wet and hot and electric, teeth dragging over his pulsepoint, another promise that Sehun isn’t sure he’s allowed to believe, can’t allow himself to need, but he lolls his head back for it, nonetheless, moans helplessly as Joonmyun pulls away to kiss his mouth once more. 

“You’re so responsive,” he laughs or maybe groans or maybe praises. “Never want to stop.” 

And entangled with him like that in the grass, nude and shaking and aching and yearning, yearning, yearning, Sehun kisses him until the sky has darkened to an inky, haunted black, until his lips and heart feel bruised and weak and broken. 

Joonmyun, as has become custom, sits next to him at dinner, his thigh warm and steady against his. Sehun feeds him again, and Joonmyun feeds him back this time, eyes bright and shining, beautiful.

 

And the moon, Sehun knows, he has only until the Moon.

And oh, Sehun, he has to let him go. Or ruin his pack for his sake. 

 

That night, as he tosses in his bed, Joonmyun crawls into his tent. 

And oh, Sehun wishes he could commit him to memory, savor every last detail of him. The tilt of his eyelashes, the warmth of his mouth, the softness of his skin, the hitch of his moan, the way his body feels, slight, but oh, so grounding as it straddles Sehun’s. 

“I want you,” he confesses into Joonmyun’s throat, repeats into his warm, perfect mouth. And Joonmyun laughs, kisses him then, deep and wet and hot, achingly distracting. Sehun’s hands stumble down his sides, curl tight and possessive around his 

“That’s the point,” he says, hands sliding down Sehun’s shoulders, over the pucker of his nipples, the trembling tension of his stomach.

“I really, really ant you” he continues. “Not to keep. Not old laws. Not ranks. Just you, Joonmyun. Just you.”

Joonmyun’s fingers curl around his waist, pull him closer, and Sehun is lost in the warm ruin of his want, the dizzying solidity of his body, the way he moans shaky and heated into his mouth.

And Sehun wants him. _Needs_ him. 

But no, no, this isn’t.

“You, you need to leave,” he gasps into Joonmyun’s collarbone, tasting the helpless rush of his racing heartbeat, the warm musk of his soft, pale skin, wanting it forever, but knowing that he can’t. Not like this. “I don’t want it, but you need it. You need it.”

Joonmyun’s lips drag over his throat, and Sehun is undone by his gasp, the shuddery way he breathes Sehun’s name. Leader. Alpha. Sehun. His teeth are blunt. A brand.

“Please go,” he repeats, even as he winds his arm around his back, clings helplessly to his small, slight, perfect, perfect body. "Please, please, please go.” And Sehun can feel the warmth, the wetness of Joonmyun’s tears, taste the salt of them as he tips forward to swallows his protest. “Go back to your old pack,” he insists against the seam of his mouth, then into the cut of his chin, settles finally to whispering into his quivering throat. "Give Yifan his wine. Jongin, he’ll drive you to the pack house. He’ll even drive you to your village, your apartment, your house. But you need to go. I need you to. I need you free.”

Joonmyun’s fingers tremble as they cup his cheekbones, and Sehun delirious, hysterical, realizes that he’s crying, too, ugly hiccuping, childish sobs, delirious, hysterical, he realizes that it hurts so much he feels like his soul is being torn in two, his body torn open. 

“Please go,”he says, sobbing when Joonmyun nips tearfully at his throat. “Leave, Joonmyun. _Leave_.”

“Sehun,” Joonmyun gasps. 

“Mating Run,” Sehun pleads into Joonmyun’s throat. “Mating Run if you—but please, Joonmyun, go, Joonmyun—this isn’t _right_ , but if you still—if you still feel the same, then. Then please.” 

Joonmyun nods, sobs, too, curls around him, though, clinging tight, clinging for the moment, and oh, it’s nearly enough. 

 

He’s gone by morning. 

And it’s Jongin that tells him. 

How the whole pack had come to greet him. How they’d cried. How Yifan had collapsed upon seeing him. How, how, how this meant that Sehun was good. That Sehun had done right. 

 

But oh, it hurts. 

The ache, it’s omnipresent. His absence, impossible to ignore. 

The collapsed skeleton of his abandoned tent. The empty spot by Sehun’s side at dinner. The photos he’d left outside Sehun’s test. His abandoned quilt. The jumbo-sized bottle of body wash, shampoo, conditioner, chemical and fruity. The pang in his heart, fevered and weak, raw and pathetic with debilitating yearning. Please, please, please. 

The leaves change colors, days bleed shorter, heart bleeds from the air, and Sehun aches and aches and aches.

It was easier, maybe, to be weak and not know it, to feel invincible and reckless with that invincibility—easier to lead as a child leads, lead as a pup leads. Easier, maybe before he’d met him, learned to depend on him, need him, long for him.

But it’s better this way, but Sehun clings to the small, singular hope. 

Mating Run. Reciprocation. Joonmyun in his arms, of his own volition. 

 

Jongin, Chanyeol, Hyunwoo, Sehun, and Taemin pile into the truck. They drive to the highway and then just past it, the furthest that Sehun has ever gone. 

There are so many wolves. So many packs. None that Sehun has ever met. But he recognizes Yifan right away. Knows from the way that Yifan stares at him that he’s been recognized, too. 

Yifan, he’s tall, strong, broad, looming, regal, imperious, dressed in the customary rich purple robes of an Alpha, painted in bands of silver, bold, a leader. A true leader. Sehun feels small, like a child, but forces himself steady as he meets his gaze. 

Yifan’s eyebrow cocks. His lip quirks up at the corner. 

And then, the run.

 

Sehun, in his eagerness, in his desperateion, stumbles, crashing into foreign wolves, tripping over rocks, tree branches, his muscles screaming in protest as he pushes himself faster, faster, faster, his entire body an aching wound of a pulse. 

To the clearing, his body shuddering, lungs screaming. 

To Joonmyun, he hopes. A Joonmyun that has come of his own volition.

His heart, it stutters, then soars when he spots him. Small slight, so devastatingly significant, dressed in ceremonial purple, too, streaked in gold and silver, handsome and perfect, hauntingly ethereal in the moonlight. A vision. 

And oh his eyes, the curl of his lips, the hesitant tilt of his eyebrows, the quirk of his small, ruddy lips. Sehun is paralyzed with want, in love with the way that the moonlight illuminates his face, makes him something too beautiful, too precious to ever keep. But Sehun wants—even if he knows he doesn’t deserve it, wants it to the point of bleeding. 

It takes Joonmyun three breathless beats, three breathtaking strides to reach him, another three beats for Joonmyun to touch him. Joonmyun cups his cheeks, and Sehun shudders so hard he nearly falls, instead claps his hand over Joonmyun’s to hold him there. His hands are soft again, city-soft, achingly so, tender, slow, slow, slow, and Sehun blinks away tears, wants him so much he feels torn open by it. 

“You came,” he breathes into Joonmyun’s wrist, and Joonmyun nods, skims his fingers down his throat.

_Want me back. Need me back. Take me_. 

Joonmyun’s hand curls around his neck, fingers molding into his nape, only the slightest pressure, the gentlest suggestion, but Sehun surges forward, stumbling down, gasping into the charged air between them. 

“Are you—will you—Stay?”

Joonmyun hums noncommittally, presses further forward, chest to chest, and Sehun can feel how hard, how fast his heart is beating, how tight and labored his breathing is, even if even if it seems like he isn’t’ as ruined by this. 

“You stole me,” he says. “Kept me like a caged little bird.”

“Before I even knew how precious you were. Before I even knew how much it would hurt to lose you.” 

Joonmyun laughs, and it tastes sweet, bright on the seam of his lips, salty, too, wet, too with the tears Sehun can see streaming down his cheeks. 

“You let me go, too.”

And his eyes are glittering, the most beautiful, beautiful shade of brown Sehun has ever seen, framed by the darkest, heaviest eyelashes as he blinks up at him, small and oh, so powerful. 

“I still—if you—I still want you. Please, please, say you want me, too. Please let me have you, Joonmyun.” 

Joonmyun tilts up, kisses him, heavy and filthy and fierce and hot and desperate and wet and possessive and so, so, so perfect. And when he curls his hands around Sehun’s shoulders, shoves, oh, it’s so easy, so natural to let himself be pinned, so easy, so natural to melt back and tug Joonmyun on top of him. 

And oh, it feels like a brand. Like a forever. Burns, blisters, binds. Stray rocks, leaves prickle against his spine. 

“Take me,” Joonmyun urges, peeling off his robe, then tearing Sehun’s shirt, pawing at the zipper of his jeans, his fingers stumbling over the gaping holes in the softened denim as he tears his pants, underwear off, leaves Sehun bare and trembling beneath him. “Catch me, Alpha. Or do you want to be caught?” His fingernails drag red and angry and stinging down Sehun’s chest. “I can’t be the predator,” he promises darkly. “I can take you, too. Devour you, too.” 

Sehun’s fingers stumble between Joonmyun’s thighs, and Joonmyun moans in encouragement, falling forward to mouth at his throat. Wet, warm, soft. Sehun smooths one shaking hand up the fine tremble of his thigh as Sehun swirls and teases and teases and teases. 

His throat click as he swallows, and he wonders how someone so small, so slight can feel so unnervingly large and important, wonders if he has any hope of handling Joonmyun as he deserves to be handled when his entire body aches with the desire to touch him and fuck him and own him, when he feels reckless and hopeless and utterly careless with desire. 

"Don't be scared," Joonmyun breathes, and Sehun shivers as Joonmyun's fingers skate down his scalp, thumb teasing tenderly at the shell of his ear, fingers tiptoeing over the nape of his neck, pinning him. "Big, scary Alpha, I want you to catch me. Want you to keep me."

Sehun's hips jump into Joonmyun's, and Joonmyun smirks around a breathy _yes_. 

”I’ll be gentle,” he says, reassuring himself as much as he’s reassuring Joonmyun, running hands down Joonmyun sides to remind himself. Small, slight, delicate, an Omega.  
Joonmyun shudders in his arms, but shakes his head. He shifts back. The bare soft skin of his ass catches as it skims his cock. Sehun wants to paint him red and pliant and gasping and soft and ruined, wants him dissolved with pleasure. 

The desire echoes through his whole body.

“That isn’t necessary,” Joonmyun says, rocking just slightly harder. “It’s better when Alphas aren’t gentle.”

"Oh.”

“You’ve always fucked gentle?” he asks, and Sehun nods dumbly. Joonmyun’s answering smile is equal parts fond and sharp and dark and dangerous. “It’s a shame. Never—hmmmm” They both hiss at the fleeting kiss of his rim against Sehun’s cock, the way the thin, delicate, wet, wet muscles dance against his aching, pulsing skin. “Never given it your all.” 

Sehun chokes on a moan as Joonmyun grinds back again, harder, more lingering, his hands squeezing tight at Sehun’s shoulders. 

“Would you let yourself be caught? Hunted? Let yourself be weak for me.”

“You make me weak,” Sehun pants. “Make me helpless. I need—I need—”

Joonmyun shakes his head, tips forward to kiss over Sehun's adam’s apple, down his sternum, fingers skipping over his ribs, his waist. “I know, I know what you need.” 

His hands skip up Sehun’s side—arresting and tight and too strong and too possessive—and Sehun shivers as he pushes back into the touch. 

His dark eyelashes flutter so gorgeously, so perfectly with pleasure. 

His fingers tease over Sehun’s lips, and Sehun watches the way dark, dark desire blooms in his pupils as as he suckles his fingers into his mouth, meeting his eyes all the while, shuddering as Joonmyun’s thumb drags over the seam of his lips. 

He curls his tongue, swallows, and Joonmyun presses down on his tongue. His other hand winds around Sehun’s skull, massaging encouragingly into his cheekbone. 

Sehun feels drunk with the taste of him. 

“Sehun,” he says. 

Sehun noses higher, up his palm, at his wrist. His tattoo. And Joonmyun laughs breathelss, continues to pet his fingers through Sehun’s hair. Sehun bites, and it tapers into a soft, breathy moan. 

“Want you mine,” Sehun confesses. “Not Yifan’s. Not anyone else’s. Want you _mine_.” 

Joonmyun’s fingers tighten, twisting, tugging. Sehun moans into his skin, licks over the salt of him, the warmth, the softness. Wanting it his. 

“Wanna claim. Take me. Keep me again.” 

“No, not like—I want—I want you to want me, too—I need you to—” 

“Touch me,” Joonmyun says. “Not so gentle,” he coaxes. “Not when you’re so strong and big. Not when it’d be a waste."

Sehun fingers scramble to squeeze back at his waist, his lips parting with a moan when Joonmyun hums softly in approval. 

“Let me,”he breathes, and Joonmyun nods shakily. 

“Yes, Alpha.”

He dips his fingers into the slickness there, groaning at how Joonmyun’s body eases open, tugs him tighter. 

Oh _gods_. 

“So gentle,” he breathes, but he nips helplessly at Sehun’s throat when sehun curls a finger inside of him, his breathing stuttering into a gratifyingly shuddery moan. 

Sehun tugs him upward with his free hand as he eases another finger inside of him, to where he’s so wet and hot and velvet soft and tight, and Joonmyun tips back, lean, lithe, gorgeous, hands resting on Sehun’s knees, cock bobbing as he as he grinds down on Sehun’s fingers, moaning softly in encouragement.

“So gentle. So gentle. More. Don’t waste it. Don’t ruin it.” 

“Joonmyun, _fuck_.”

“During my heat—” Blood rushes in his ears. “During my heat, I thought of you, you know.”

“Fuck.” 

“Thought of riding your knot until I couldn’t breathe. Ringing you dry, how you’d stuff me so full, I’d be dripping come for ages.”

Sehun’s fingers thrust faster, and Joonmyun’s eyelashes kiss against his throat. 

“Wanted you knot. Want it.” 

“What else did you think about?” he rasps, and Joonmyun laughs around a breathy, breathy moan, trembles so hard his fingers nearly slip from their perch on Sehun’s thighs as Sehun drags deliberately, pressing hard, hard, hard, as hard as he can allow himself to press, on Joonmyun’s prostate. 

“Sitting on your face,” Joonmyun pants out. “Hmmmmmm, riding your tongue. Fucking your mouth, your thighs, you ass, fucking you until you can’t breathe.” 

Sehun groans, fucks even faster, harder, shivering at the way it makes Joonmyun tremble so much he lefts clean on Sehun’s fingers. 

“Like that,” he gasps, sinking down on them again. “Just like that. Hard. Use it. Come on. Let me use it.” 

But it’s still hard to heed his advice, hard when his body is so unnervingly small and delicate, hard when his every shiver, every moan echoes across Sehun’s own body, drowns him in sensation. Hard, hard, hard when Joonmyun keeps tearing seam by seam at his fraying self-control. 

Joonmyun twists his hips and rides them instead, gropes clumsily down for Sehun’s cock, the already expanding bulb of his knot. Joonmyun’s teeth graze his throat, and Sehun’s hips jump, free fingers scrambling over his small shoulders, down his small back, squeezing tight at his small waist.

“Fuck me, come on,” Joonmyun groans. “Fuck me. Not gentle. Fuck me like you want to claim me, Alpha. Fuck me like an Alpha.” 

And oh, oh, oh, he’s twisting and then off, panting shuddery praises into Sehun’s skin as he sinks down, his body stretching around him, exquisitely wet and hot and tight and soft and perfect. 

“So big, so hot, hmmm. Alpha, Alpha. Alpha.”

Sehun, he nearly comes from that alone. 

“Not gentle,” he hisses as Sehun arrests his hips, grinds up into tiny, trembling, trembling increments. 

The pleasure, it’s staggering, even more so when he rears back, fucks forward, feels the wet, hot, hot tug of those tiny, gorgeous muscles around his aching cock. 

Never, it’s never—

“Joonmyun, oh, Joonmyun—”

Joonmyun’s own hands scramble to scrape down his spine, his chin knocking against Sehun’s sternum, mouth falling there wet and sharp and open as he moans. 

“Take me. Take me. Take me. Come _on_.”

He rises again, drops, huffs out a laugh at the way that Sehun’s entire body trembles. 

“Oh, Sehunnie. Lovely, lovely, Sehunnie, come on. Come on.”

And he goes and goes and goes. Lifting Joonmyun, dropping him, fucking upwards at the same time, moaning at the way that his body rattles with pleasure, with desire, with heat, with need. Even more, more, more. 

Joonmyun’s hands anchor at his shoulders. “Sehunnie, Alpha&mdahsfuck, fuck, fuck—tell me, tell me—ah&mdahswould you let an Omega shadow leader into your pack? Would you let a….Omega into your heart?”

_Yes, yes, yes_. 

Joonmyun twists his hips, practically _whimpers_ , head tipping back, exposing the plush ruddy ruin of his parted lips, the glint of his white teeth, the heave of his flushed throat, the blown black of his dark eyes. And oh, oh, the shuddery timbre of his moan.

“Take orders from him, trust him with your livelihood, with you pack?” 

Sehun fucks harder in response, and Joonmyun's fingers scramble along his shoulders, blunt fingernails dragging red, hot, stinging trails along his skin. His breath puffs hot and wet against Sehun's throat, tastes dizzyingly sweet, dizzyingly like home. 

He hisses out a moan, and Joonmyun's teeth graze, the hint of a claim, the barest possibility of a forever. A brand. A blistering, burning, burning brand. 

"Rely on him even though he was an Omega," he asks or whimpers or moans against Sehun’s jawline, the words fraying just the slightest as he grinds down more insistently, body so excruciatingly tight and hot as it attempts to accept Sehun’s pulsing knot. 

“Even though he was small? Even though he—hmmm—was your enemy? Even if he was only ever meant to be a means towards an end?”

Joonmyun does something with his hips then, and pleasure pierces through Sehun, sharp and searing. And oh, oh, fuck, he’s sliding down further, further, further, rocking down insistently on Sehun’s knot, moans staccatoing at the exertion. 

“Yes,” Sehun whispers, or maybe pleads, or maybe sobs. “Yes, Joonmyun. Please, please, _please_.”

Joonmyun trembles violently in his arms, shifts atop him again and again and again. And the heat is staggering, nearly all consuming.   
Sehun’s hips jump forward, and Joonmyun gasps. His head lolls back, eyelashes fluttering shut.

He’s beautiful. He’s perfect. 

Sehun wants him, wants him so much it hurts, even right now, when he has him. 

“That knot,” he pants, grinding down on it more forcefully, and Sehun nearly comes when he sinks down fully on it. “Wanted it, wanted it. Want it.”

Joonmyun’s whimpers taste sweet, heady. 

Joonmyun’s teeth graze again, and Sehun offers his throat, jerks as he bites down hard, spills messily between them as he laps at the blood on Sehun’s neck. 

Sehun is quaking, so, so, so close, venturing higher, higher, nipping at Joonmyun’s chest, his sternum, the base of his throat, trembling, fucking forward faster, sloppier, needier as he burns with the cellular need need need to bite and take, trembles through the utter terror and possession and darkness of it. 

Joonmyun lolls his head back, clenches around him, chokes. “Alpha,” he says. And Sehun clumsily, desperately, recklessly noses up, right where he wants it most. Joonmyun’s fingers scramble over his back, twist in his hair, holding there. “Would you?” he gasps, and Sehun whimpers out a yes, bites, bites, bites as Joonmyun shifts atop him, grinding him weakly through the aftershocks, locking him there, pinning him there, branding and ruining and tearing and breaking him there.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to s and m for giving me boys, to other m for promising me i could do it, and to v for talking me off a cliff.


End file.
